preschool teacher

child care teacher

lead teacher

daycare teacher

childcare provider

Childtime Learning Centers

I loved so many things about this job! The parents were awesome, and my students were the best. The director of my school was amazing! I knew I had an advocate, ally and friend in her at all times. She's no longer acting as the director of the school but she was great at her job. I always felt that I could get the classroom resources I needed, and that I was supported in the day-to-day management and discipline of my classroom.

However, there were a few things that I just couldn't reconcile. The biggest was my wage. It was, to be blunt, insultingly low. Even with a bachelor's degree and 2 years of elementary classroom teaching experience, I had to fight for an hourly wage that came out to just about $26k per year before taxes and healthcare (if I worked 40 hours a week for 52 weeks without taking time off). Two years after I'd started, I had earned a $0.39 per hour raise and a few PTO hours. I was one of the better-paid teachers in the school. 

Childtime provided healthcare for all full-time employees, which not every preschool can say. However, the out-of-pocket costs were very high, especially considering the low wages of most (if not all) of the school employees. More than once, the admin staff at my doctor's office thought there was something wrong with my insurance because the co-pays were so high. Maybe that has improved since; but at the time, paying several hundred dollars each month in premiums and then upwards of $45 - $60 for an office visit (depending on the doctor) was a lot for me.

I believe that part of the reason it was so hard to find and keep good teachers was because the work load was high for such a pittance. I know that Childtime is not alone in the childcare industry when it comes to providing low wages and underwhelming benefits. But for a company that I believe truly wants to do what's best for the children in their care, better wages and benefits would make a lot of difference.

I did like that once I punched out for the day, I was totally done with work. That's the benefit of being paid hourly, I guess. Overall, though, the hours were too unpredictable for me. There would be times when I would work several very long days in a row then be cut early on another day. When I was cut early, I rarely knew about it more than an hour in advance. When this happened, I wasn't able to complete the day's curriculum. Why would I be sent home early? To eliminate having to pay me overtime. Every business has a budget, I totally get that! But there's got to be a better way to schedule preschools.  

Honestly, if the pay was better and the hours more predictable, I could've stayed at this job for a long time. In many ways, I felt empowered to provide my students with excellent care and education. I miss the kids every day! I hope that someday our economic and governmental systems put their money where their mouth is when they say they value education. The most important years to your child are between birth and age 7. Higher paid teachers are happier, less stressed, and healthier. Pay your early childhood teachers more, and your children will reap the rewards...it's as simple as that!

Our director will place a schedule for the day in the main office and all staff go to see their times for any classroom switching, breaks, training, etc. Each lead teacher will bring children from the opening room to their main room where stories are read and snack is provided. Play time and educational material are mixed in an effort to make things fun for the young children yet enhance their understanding of subjects taught. Lunch is provided around noon and the a two-hour nap time ensues for all children except school-age. After nap time another snack is provided and more play time is given as well as more educational material. Children are allowed to play until parents arrive. 

I learned how to better interact with children more effectively, in addition to being shown different ways to show a child how to properly handle situations and to use their words instead of screaming or hitting. Patience is a key part of being able to keep on top of situations that arise everyday. Interacting with parents everyday in a manner that shows a friendly and encouraging environment as well as ensuring them that their children are in a good place. 

Management can be severely lacking some days. It seems the school is run to be easy for directors and not to be effective and less stressful for teachers and morning openers. Often times schedules are not completed on their designated day until later in that day, leading to some staff being unaware when breaks are to be given, unaware of possible room switches, and lots of frustration that has ended in a few employees leaving.

The hardest part of the job is maintaining constant count of children and being able to ensure each child is being helped or given proper direction to handle situations.

The most enjoyable part of the job is seeing the children enjoy being at the school and forming a bond with them and their families. For instance many children will be excited to see you in the mornings or when you simply pass by their rooms, they will talk to their parents about how much they enjoy coming to school and have a great teacher presence. The parents will feel much better about leaving their children in your care and it is a great feeling to see how much you can impact their lives

I worked there for almost two years and let me just say it’s  a horrible place to work. Let’s start in the front office where since I’ve been there , there has been five managerial changes. The replacement gets worse and worse ( with the exception of one AD who they didn’t make the director). But the pervious director who just left was very phony and he believed in nepotism, hiring all his childhood friends. Now this wouldn’t be a problem if they were great to employees, but not one of them do their jobs. With him hiring all his friends he showed favoritism, letting them go and come as they pleased , use their phone and devices in the room with the children and sit in the office having personal conversations while on the clock. But, it gets worse as he has hired all his friends and their friends giving them more then serval people who have been there for years (none of which has been a minority). There are employees who has worked there for who make less than $10 and people who come in with no experience or degree starting off at $10.50. When I found out he was leaving , I thought things would get better and they did with the acting director who was great and made sure everyone came to work and did their job , but then they hired someone else who did not have a clue to take over. So yes the acting director was training her boss. The new director ( although I’ve only worked with for a little over a month) , is a pushover and the people who did whatever they want went back to slacking off and sitting in the office all day not doing anything. They could have left the acting director alone. Now onto the classrooms, while there are several teachers who honestly shouldn’t be allowed near children , the most important concern is that there several rooms with too many big personalities and there’s tension in all the rooms. Management honestly just brushes everything under the rug , until an argument occurs in the classroom in front of a parent and than we might have a pod meeting. The main issue is the front office ( not the office assistant, she’s great) , but they are very unorganized, lack communication and proper training to run a daycare. They also wanted to compare us to other academies and schools but CT is not a school because all they care about is warm bodies in the classroom and not actually education and curriculum.

The first task of the day in the life of a infant teacher is morning drop off. This is where parents hand over their infants to the teachers and we listen to their requests and concerns on their childrens needs and re-asssure them we will take only the best care of them while they are away at work. You repeat this until you have eight infants between yourself and another teacher. As the children arrive you sign every one of them in by full name, time and date. You also do a health check searching their bodies for any unusual markings they might come in with and document what you see. Once all of the infants have arrived you feed them all by hand baby food and each child eats differently due to a specifc liking of their parents desires or allergies they might have. It is crucial that everyone is signed in and checked soon as they arrive or you can get written up due to state policy that every child is accounted for. Some children arrive in pairs and this makes it difficult to console the parent, the possibly crying child along with others your try to watch in the room, sign them in and do their health check. Feeding times are also very difficult due to there is eight infants to two teachers. There isnt enough hands to hand feed eight babies at the same time so our job consists of having alot of patience while many of them are crying all at once. There is alot of papaerwork to this job. You must document every diaper change, bottle feeding, how many ounces were drank, the times they slept/ woke along with many other things and this all has to be done at time of service. Reading this it all seems practically impossible and at times it was but I truly enjoyed watching these children grow and learn from the things we taught them before turing one years old and moving up to the next room. Our management was awful and very difficult to work for but over all my co workers were very supportive and understanding seeing we were all there for the same reason. To work together and help these children learn and grow.

A typical day would start out with upon my arrival, my students would be lined up and ready to move and enter our preschool classroom. We would eat breakfast and have circle time after to discuss the days of the week, the weather, and what the topic of the day would be. We would have a story time after manipulative play, then we would have an art project before lunch. After lunch, we would have quiet activities to wind down for naptime. Nap would last for no more than 3 hours, then we would have a snack after awaking and having a restroom break. We would try to go outside for a half hour in the morning and in the evening, if weather would permit it. After nap and snack we would have a second circle time to discuss how our afternoon and early evening would be planned out and if we had any special events going on. After coming in from being outside, we would then play in our centers until parents got there, about an hour before closing the center, the students left would clean up and have a story time and play quiet activities to wait for parents to arrive. The hardest part of the job would have been potty time and transition time. The most enjoyable time, would have to be the whole job itself. I love teaching children and nurturing them. Just knowing that I was able to steer a child in the right direction and make good, positive choices meant the world to me. I would do it 100 times over with this company given the chance. I loved management, and my co-workers. I stayed to myself about my personal life though. I was taught at a very early age, never to mix business with personal matters.

There’s a lot of drama working for child time. People talking behind other peoples back. People  telling lies on others to management, management doesn’t no what is going on in classrooms most of the time, and don’t really care unless there’s a complaint from somebody that could get them in trouble with licensing. Employee’s feel burnt out pretty much force to be in a class room with 17 to 20 kids. With severe emotional problems, all freaking out at the same time. No real backup help, in fact, if children are out of control other staff and management will avoid helping you. When children finally calm down, management runs into the room letting you know they were watching you in stress with the children on the camera, and this is what you could have done better. Management takes the stance it’s not there job to help you manage your classroom by actually getting involved with what is going on in real time, but provide you training so that maybe you can do it better the next time it happens. They constantly reminded you if you are abusive to a child you will be fired, but they refuse to use best practices to prevent that from happening, such as seeing a teacher in distress, stepping into the classroom, and sending a teacher on a 15min break. Management rather reprimand the employees write them up and fuss at them and destroy their character in a very toxic way, then to help them succeed. And if the truth be told I have seen this play out in many childcare settings not just this one. And this is why teacher are leaving because they are tired of  unprofessional, disrespectful, treatment.

I didnt work here for long for two reason, personal health reasons and they kept scheduling me to work with the one coworker I had an issue with. I worked in two rooms, infant 1 and infant 2. When I first got hired, it was agreed that I would mostly be out in one room but constantly ended up working in another room, in the room with the employee I had an issue with. There were people I really enjoyed working with and actually shared the workload. There were people I worked with in both rooms who were extremely helpful and taught me a lot. Some were stricter than others but everyone was very kind. But outside of those people, there were specific people (said employee I had an issue with) who would take advantage of others and make you change all the diapers, put all the responsibility on you and take all the credit for everything you or anyone else just did. I definitely feel like there was favoritism, as it felt like our locations managers would let certain people get away with more. I got pretty upset one time when I heard them discussing how they were going to give a particular employee a longer break so they could just hang out when they were extremely strict on everyone else. But it felt like they frequently gave this employee breaks and would put their workload on the rest of us. They would pat them on the back and say they were one of the best but they did the least work out of anyone in that building. Overall it CAN be a great experience if you are working with the right people. It is a friendly environment and most people are willing to help you learn and grow. You just have to be ready to stick up for yourself and not let other employees take advantage of you by making you take on all the workload. 

There are so many things I could say but I'm going to start with the staff. The staff at Childtime Learning Center are more childish than the children. They use language they shouldn't be, they talk bad about the kids, they gossip and spread false rumors about other staff and they don't handle the children as they should. They also don't teach the children anything. 
The management at Childtime Learning Center is a joke. They don't know how to run the center. They take paid days off to go get their hair done instead of taking those days off for an emergency. There are two mangers and they both leave for lunch at the same time. There is never a time when the managers aren't doing stuff together. Also 9/10 times you go into the office to talk to one of them neither one is there. Their location is always unknown. They leave the building whenever they want. Another thing is they don't know how to make a schedule for the employees. They also don't give out fair break times and sometimes they don't even give some employees a break even after the employ had worked more than 8 hours. The last thing I have to say about the management is that they gossip about some of their staff with other staff in front of who they are talking about. Purely disgusting.
Childtime Learning center just is the most unprofessional place I've ever worked and would never recommend anybody work there or have their kid dropped of there. One employee who I worked with said if she had to move to another job she would never leave her kids in the hands of Childtime Learning Center. That should say a lot.

I have worked at Childtime for 8 year. I initially started as a floater/teachers' aide at the Childtime in St. Clair Shores. Within the first year, I was promoted to a lead teacher position. As a lead teacher, I wanted to further my knowledge and understanding of Early Childhood, so I enrolled at Macomb Community College. Later, I re-located to the Childtime in Chesterfield, obtained an Associates Degree in Early Childhood and recently a Bachelor Degree in Early Education.
       A typically day starts with helping the children transition from parent(s), to my classroom. This transition varies from day to day and mood to mood. At any rate, It is my responsibility to make the parent and children comfortable, and assured that they are safe and loved.
    My co-workers are my extended family, and we work as a team to provide the best early learning experience for the children and their families.
    The hardest part of my job is detaching. The reason this is hard for me is because most of the children at my center have been going there since they were 6 weeks old. I watch them grow, learn, and develop into beautiful little people. From crawling, to walking, potty learning, to graduating and going to kindergarten. I have relationships with the children and their family. The detachment is hard because I look at these children as my children, and to see them move on, although it is an exciting, proud moment, it is hard. With that being said, it is also the most enjoyable part of my job, forming relationships with the children and their families, that will last for a lifetime.

The students are what makes the job enjoyable. However the job itself is not enjoyable whatsoever. Management stalls when it comes to resolving issues, and will often tell you to “wait” for weeks at a time before something is done. You’ll be hired to work for a certain age group/room and then they’ll have you all over the place in different rooms every week. The pay is terrible. You dont get paid if you have to quarantine due to yourself or someone else being sick. Theres no overtime. For example if you get 5 minutes of overtime, they make you take a extra 5 minutes on your lunch or make you clock in/out 5 minutes early/late. Lots of drama between staff and also theres many situations as a Teacher Assistant you will be doing most of the work in your room and feeling very burnt out halfway through your shift. Theres cameras in the classroom so parents tend to micromanage and have the ability to call and or send messages all day complaining about every little thing youre doing. This can create stress and frustration because theres obviously more than one student in the classroom. You have to pay for everything on your own, additional training if it cost and if its needed, when you initially start you have to pay for your own BR check etc... you will get a refund for it only if you stay for a certain period of time. If you want a job that pays well and has growth opportunities and makes you feel respected for the work you do. This isnt the place. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Preschool teacher 91 salaries reported	$15.58 per hour
Child care teacher 62 salaries reported	$15.67 per hour
Lead teacher 24 salaries reported	$18.68 per hour
Daycare teacher 113 salaries reported	$16.97 per hour
Childcare provider 14 salaries reported	$15.11 per hour

Working at Childtime Learning Centers: Company Overview and Reviews

Childtime Learning Centers

Childtime Learning Centers Ratings

Popular jobs at Childtime Learning Centers

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected