Tess in an Educator in the Choklits Toddler Room, has worked in early Education for 13 years and holds a Certificate 3 in children’s services and Diploma in children’s services.
Over to Tess…
I love working in early education and care because I love observing and fostering children’s development through their own exploration. I believe as early years Educator’s our main purpose is to encourage children to discover who they are as their own person and to support their sense of agency at all times.
Throughout my career I’ve been most proud of my growing abilities to problem solve, in turn, helping children and their families to discover and learn about different means to support their children through obstacles that may arise in their child’s life. 3 years ago I was the Director of a brand new small centre, so that was a really big milestone in my career. I needed to support and train staff and work with them to develop every day procedures in the running of the centre. I also needed to work closely with families and take on a lot of feedback to ensure we were running our every day in the best interest of fostering children’s development in order to have them reach their highest potential. We successfully went through assessment and rating and that too was a huge millstone in my career.
When I’m not at Choklits I love spending time with my 15 month old and Fiance! We love being outdoors, walking the trails around our house and searching for any fun recreational activities around our area. I also love spending time with my family down in Portarlington! We bought our house 3 years ago and we are still in the middle of doing some home renovations which always keeps us nice and busy too! When we have spare time, we love going away for the weekend on road trips and camping.
The funniest thing a child has ever said to me was about 2 years ago when I was pregnant with my son. I had one of my 2 year olds, who was absolutely fascinated with my ever growing tummy, come up to me one morning and ask when my baby was coming out. I told him that it would be about 10 weeks, he responded with “Wow! But your baby will be much too big to fit out your mouth by then! Your pants almost don’t fit you!”