Career Advice: Diploma/Degree - OOSH or LDC

[law92]

Hi all

I really need some career advice I don't know where else to turn to! I would really appreciate any input anyone can give me at this point. So, I have just recently got a job working in after school care working at 2 primary schools through a large, well known company - 1 state school & 1 private school. The work is fine, but I'm not really passionate about it. The coordinators can be a bit snappy at all the assistants, but I guess they just get stressed out with the job. I don't really take any notice of it.
Before I got this job, I had been working as an assistant in the toddler room in a long day care centre for nearly 2 years while completing my certificate 3. I absolutely loved working in ldc as I do prefer to work with the younger age groups. However, I got really stressed out with the job as the centre is in a low socio economic area of town and all the children come from disadvantaged homes, etc and were a bit of a handful at the best of times. At the time I was working as an unqualified assistant while completing my cert 3 and it was also my first child care job ever, so found it harder than other staff to deal with the behavioural problems that the children were constantly showing. The staff were great, but after awhile I started to get really depressed going into work as I had to deal with the same behavioural problems every day - I think the children just got bored as we didn't have many resources and got frustrated at having to share toys, etc so a lot of them were biting as well. It became increasingly harder and harder for me to even get out of bed of a morning, let alone go into work and deal with the children. This is when my work performance started to suffer as I was sick of the same problems with the children every day, and I started to get snappy at everyone, and just became more and more unhappy at work. I started to feel inferior as all the other staff were a lot more experienced and qualified than myself. I asked my director if I could take some holidays as I felt I just really needed a break, but because we only had a small staff, and 1 of the other girls who was a group leader was away at this time doing her prac for uni, I wasn't allowed to have any holidays, so I decided to stick it out. In the end I was desperately unhappy at work, I was becoming more frustrated with the children's behaviour and I guess that was starting to show, and my relationships with my director and other staff were suffering, I decided to quit. I felt things didn't end on a good note though.
After all this, I decided to take a break from child care, and stayed unemployed over the christmas break last year until about March this year, when I got my ASC job. I thought that I would maybe like working with school age children more than the younger children as I got so stressed out in the child care job I was doing. I applied at the last minute in February this year to do my Bachelor of early childhood education and got accepted. I am finding the work load too much and I'm just finding I have no passion for ASC. I'm starting to lose interest in this degree and don't know how I will keep the motivation to get through the 4 years of study for it. Maybe my lack of motivation is due to not being satisfied at work? I don't know. I don't hate my ASC job, but I'm not thrilled to be doing it either. The hourly rate is good, but they only employ people on a casual basis, and I really need to have a permanent job as I'm trying to plan my wedding and want to start having my own kids in a few years' time, and want to buy a house with my partner soon, and only working about 8 hours a week in after school care is just not cutting it.

So my question is - do I try and get a job in child care at the end of this year once I have built up a good work history with my after school care employer, as I feel that my old child care employer won't give me a good reference as things were left there on a bad note? Should I stick with my Bachelor degree but just do less subjects per semester? or chuck it in to do a diploma through my local TAFE and do it on campus and use my TAFE teacher as a reference to get a child care job? if I do my diploma instead, it will give me about 1-2 years credit off the bachelor when I complete it, if I still wanted to do the degree later on? It might make the degree easier to manage if I got those credits for it after I complete the diploma as I would only have about 2-2.5 years left of the bachelor, as I always tend to lose motivation for study really easily- even toward the end of my cert 3 I was losing motivation for it and had to really push myself to get through it in the end.The only reason why I even started my degree was because it will hopefully lead to a good wage being a kindy teacher at the end of it, which I will need if I want to start my own family in the future? But I always wanted to work as a group leader in the nursery room - that would be my dream job, to work as a group leader in the nursery or in a toddler room with 15 months-2 year old children. My parents really want me to become a primary school teacher, but I just can't see myself doing that sort of work, my passion has always been for the early years. If I stayed doing my Bachelor degree but found a job working in child care, would I only be qualified to work as an assistant as I have my cert 3 as well? I found that working as an assistant, in particular an unqualified assistant at the time, I was getting all of the crappy jobs which I hated, and I would just prefer to be working in a higher position, such as a group leader. I understand that unqualified workers all get the jobs that no one else wants to do. Maybe I would be better off doing my diploma so I could work as a group leader then if I want to go back into child care, instead of doing my degree? Also, the diploma is going really cheap at the moment at my TAFE, so I would save a lot of money if I decided to do it instead of my degree.

I just don't know what to do. Please help any advice would be fantastic. I just don't feel happy with this situation at all, and can feel myself starting to get depressed again.

[Lorina]

I completely understand where you're coming from. It's really hard to determine whether or not we are making the right career choice... 

I completed my diploma in 2007 and have been a room leader in Childcare for the past 5 years, working with the toddlers and preschoolers. Like your passion for working in the nursery room, mine is working with preschoolers and I soon realized that I needed to complete my degree to be able to work as a preschool teacher. So last year I started my degree. It started off really well and then I fell pregnant, lost motivation so I discontinued it for now. However, honestly I don't know if I want to continue with my degree in the future. I'm just going to see how it goes... The thing  is when you start your degree you have 10 years to complete it, so you can take it one step up a time, instead of trying to complete it all at once. 

With your situation I would suggest you compete your diploma first... At least with your diploma there is more of an opportunity to gain experience as a room leader which is what you really want to do. Yes, with a degree your wage will be more however if you really want to work as a nursery room leader then by completing your diploma you can do this sooner rather than later.... Also like you mentioned when you complete your diploma, you will gain credit for your degree in the future. 

Even while studying a degree, since you already have a cert 3, from what I understand you will only be paid as a cert 3 until you gain your diploma qualification or your degree... And yes working as an assistant means you mostly get stuck with crappy jobs such as cleaning... That's how it is... 

You can continue working at ASC, complete your diploma then find a full time job at a LDC. The only reason why I am suggesting to stay with ASC is because since you're working split shifts, you have that time during the day to complete assignments etc. if you begin working at an LDC then you probably won't find time and it will take longer to complete your diploma.... 

I wish you the best of luck and I just wanted to give you my thoughts on your situation, 

Hope all turns out well for you, 

Cheers
,
L.A

[law92]

Hi thanks for your reply its really helped. I just found out from my ASC job that I won't be getting any more shifts until my coordinator gets her supervisor certificate as none of us have it. So for now, I have to rely on getting my income support payments from centrelink which I'm eligible for because I'm doing uni at the moment. These payments will also help to pay for the diploma. In this case ill have to stick with the uni degree I think and do the diploma at the same time. I'll just have to work really hard at both and hopefully have the diploma finished early next year.
Also, do employers of child care centres check the academic results of early childhood graduates when they first employ them? Just wondering if it will matter if I get a fail on my academic transcript will it matter?

[Lorina]

Doing your diploma and your degree at the same time is going to be extremely tough! The degree itself takes up a lot of time and research and doing your diploma on top if that... Well if you can manage it then it's great. However if you still want to do the diploma, why don't you finish it first... You can do it in 6 months or less and then continue with your degree after you finish your diploma so you can gain credit for your diploma qualification. If you are doing both the degree and diploma at the same time you won't be able to gain credit (I'm pretty sure that with a diploma qualification you only get 1 year of credit off the degree) so I guess you're not losing out that much!

Don't worry if you fail a subject through the diploma or degree... As long as you get the qualification certificate at the end of it, thats all that matters...

Good luck with the studies,

,
L.A