How it all started... by moz333

View this thread on steempeak.com
· @moz333 ·
$1.33
How it all started...

This post has turned out to be quite a bit lengthier than I anticipated but is about how I came to work at the school as a cook.  So I thank you in advance if you do take the time to read through the whole thing, and if not, I guarantee that future posts about my work will be much shorter and more about the food, including recipes and how I handle the specific and diverse dietary needs of some of the kids.

I have mentioned in previous posts but will explain fully here - I work at a Primary School OSCH (Out of School Hours Care).  My main role is in the kitchen and I am responsible for all of the grocery shopping (I go twice a week), making sure the kitchen is fully stocked, meal planning, and preparation of the after school snack – plus all the cleaning up afterwards.  We are open for Before and After School Care (including student free days but not public holidays) as well as all day Vacation Care during the school holidays. 

So during school term we care for an average of 20-30 kids in the mornings before school starts, and after school we have an average of 70-80 kids each day, except for Tuesdays which is always our busiest day with 95 kids.  During Vacation Care our capacity is capped at 50 kids but we have them all day and we take them on excursions and organise fun themed activities to keep them amused each day.
I’ve been working at OSHC for a little over a year now and I can’t believe how the time has flown. When I think back to what my life looked like a year ago, I have to say I’m pretty proud of how far I’ve come. 

Prior to commencing with OSHC I had been unemployed for a considerable amount of time, my career as a case worker ended after a car accident which left me with a back injury that prevented me from doing many things, one of which was sitting for any extended period of time (including sitting in the car to drive to work and sitting at my desk for long enough to hold a single appointment let alone sit for the entire day I was supposed to be there).  I did work one season for a friend picking and packing cherries but after 3 weeks I bent down to pick up an empty box off the floor and my back went out and I missed the last few weeks of the season.  I tried network marketing but my social and family network was pretty small as it was so trying to sell stuff to the few people I knew wasn’t exactly easy, especially when I was going through a crisis of identity and self worth.  

Two days before Christmas of 2017 I ended up in hospital with the mother of all splinters in my big toe (word of advice – never walk into a shipping container without shoes on!).  They gave me a tetanus shot and 3 nerve blocking injections (MOST TRAUMATIC thing I’ve EVER experienced in a hospital) and made an inch long incision on the underside of my toe so they could dig around with a pair of pliers and try to remove the splinter. They tried for some time but couldn’t remove it, and being a small country hospital, they couldn’t ultrasound it there so by the time Christmas public holidays were over and I could to a bigger hospital, they couldn’t detect anything and I spent the next 2 months on crutches while my body expelled all the broken bits of splinter naturally.  Did it hurt when the splinter went in? YES.  Did it hurt when the splinter came out? YES YES YES YES YES  for each little piece of broken splinter that worked it’s way to my skin’s surface and waited for me to pull out one by one.

So by February of 2018 I was feeling the most useless and lost I had in years, living on a large 11 acre property on a steep hillside was not easy to move around on crutches, so I didn’t move around most of the time.  I couldn’t drive because I couldn’t put pressure on my toe to push the accelerator pedal and my partner couldn’t take me for a motorbike ride because I couldn’t get my foot into my motorbike boots.

Eventually this all passed and I slowly re-gained the use of my foot again.  I decided to go for drives and see what fruit was available to pick on the roadside, explore the local area, just get out and see where the day took me. One of these days I found my self nearing the school my niece attends and it was close to finishing time and I hadn’t seen her in a while so I called my sister-in-law to see if I could surprise her after school and pick her up and hang out for a while.  My sister-in-law agreed and she asked me to come and say hi to her while I was waiting for my niece, she worked at the OSCH in the kitchen at that time so I parked the car and went in to say hi.  After chatting to her and a few of her co-workers for a few minutes, the conversation surprisingly turned into a job interview as my sister-in-law was wanting to leave her job there and all of a sudden realised I was the perfect person to take over from her!  So I met the Director and had a very quick conversation with her (it was pretty much “can you cook, can you do the grocery shopping, do you have a police clearance and when can you do you RAN training [Reporting Abuse and Neglect]?)

I already had the police clearance so I booked into the next available RAN course and by March I was employed!  I’d never worked with kids before and my first day was such a whirlwind of crazy, but good crazy, I still remember it so clearly.  A year down the track and I still get those whirlwind crazy days, you never know what kids are going to say or do next, they always surprise you in some way or another.  Working with kids can be so unpredictable at times but is the most rewarding thing I’ve done in a very long time.  Being a case worker years ago was rewarding as well but this is a different kind of rewarding, when you’re not there to address a particular issue, but you’re a part of someone’s upbringing and development, contributing to their every day life and shaping what they know to be normal.  When a little person looks up to you, not only because they know you as the person who feeds their hungry little tummies, but because they know you as safe person who is there to care for them and provide a safe space for them to grow and learn – there’s absolutely nothing like it….it truly is amazing to be a part of.

If you made it to the end of this post, I congratulate you for your reading stamina!  I will leave it here for now though but have many more OSCH stories coming so keep an eye out for those (I promise they will be much shorter than this one!)  I will use the tag #OSHC-stories so they will be easier to find when I have lots of them.
Thanks for reading.




Posted using [Partiko Android](https://partiko.app/referral/moz333)
👍  , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
properties (23)
post_id73,555,672
authormoz333
permlinkhow-it-all-started-pwykrozk
categorylife
json_metadata{"tags":["life","oshc-stories","food","education","partiko"],"app":"partiko"}
created2019-04-22 22:39:51
last_update2019-04-22 22:39:51
depth0
children2
net_rshares2,785,165,697,437
last_payout2019-04-29 22:39:51
cashout_time1969-12-31 23:59:59
total_payout_value1.058 SBD
curator_payout_value0.269 SBD
pending_payout_value0.000 SBD
promoted0.000 SBD
body_length6,603
author_reputation9,623,506,263,980
root_title"How it all started..."
beneficiaries[]
max_accepted_payout1,000,000.000 SBD
percent_steem_dollars10,000
author_curate_reward""
vote details (16)
@partiko-promoter ·
None
Thank you so much for being an awesome Partiko user! You have received a 46.32% upvote from us for your 11025 Partiko Points! Together, let's change the world!
properties (22)
post_id73,555,678
authorpartiko-promoter
permlinkre-how-it-all-started-pwykrozk-20190422t223957
categorylife
json_metadata{}
created2019-04-22 22:39:57
last_update2019-04-22 22:39:57
depth1
children0
net_rshares0
last_payout2019-04-29 22:39:57
cashout_time1969-12-31 23:59:59
total_payout_value0.000 SBD
curator_payout_value0.000 SBD
pending_payout_value0.000 SBD
promoted0.000 SBD
body_length159
author_reputation203,652,098,184
root_title"How it all started..."
beneficiaries[]
max_accepted_payout1,000,000.000 SBD
percent_steem_dollars10,000
@johnb75 ·
Proud of you babe, you've come a long way in the time we've known each other, well done xo
properties (22)
post_id73,614,870
authorjohnb75
permlinkre-moz333-how-it-all-started-pwykrozk-20190423t224746711z
categorylife
json_metadata{"tags":["life"],"app":"steemit\/0.1"}
created2019-04-23 22:47:48
last_update2019-04-23 22:47:48
depth1
children0
net_rshares0
last_payout2019-04-30 22:47:48
cashout_time1969-12-31 23:59:59
total_payout_value0.000 SBD
curator_payout_value0.000 SBD
pending_payout_value0.000 SBD
promoted0.000 SBD
body_length90
author_reputation162,596,469,388
root_title"How it all started..."
beneficiaries[]
max_accepted_payout1,000,000.000 SBD
percent_steem_dollars10,000