A rare breed - the male kindergarten teacher

Submitted by Mastodon on Fri, 2012-11-09 00:02

Article here. Excerpt:

'On a small piece of woodland next to the Technido daycare centre in Karlsruhe, a group of boys noisily build a bush camp out of logs. Amid whoops of glee, they start running around, wildly shooting at each other with sticks.

“Karl, Lennie, the rules are keep the sticks down at belly height,” says teacher Todd Phillips calmly as he walks up to the boys. “No sticks near anyone’s eyes.”

“It's important to have a man here when the warring camps construct their battleground,” Phillips said afterwards, tongue in cheek.

The 47-year-old has been working at the daycare centre looking after children aged between four and six for more than four years.

Phillips, who hails from Florida but has been living in Germany for 15 years, had been working as a graphic designer at an advertising agency. As he became increasingly dissatisfied with his job, he started looking for alternatives and decided that he wanted to work with children.

“They are very spontaneous, open and honest and live in the moment for the most part,” he says. “It just took me a while to realise that suited me more than advertising.”'

Like0 Dislike0