Falling Into The Right Place

Jakki Kydd-Fidelman
(Photo Credits: Jakki)

Different but the Same

I was a stay at home mom for ten years, and then I got offered a job as a preschool teacher, so I changed my career. Somebody asked me to teach, and I said sure. I was filling in for somebody who went on maternity leave. They said we need a preschool teacher and you’d be really good at it. I taught preschool for 21 years. I did both preschool and afterschool for a while, and I came here full time in 2000. I am a little bit older than you think (laughs). Now, I am the Minneapolis Kids Coordinator. I coordinate the before and after school program- the child care program here at Pratt. My mom was a teacher, and my grandmother was a teacher, so I think that that influenced me. Although, I didn’t start out to be a teacher. I have a degree in engineering so I was an engineer and I opened a photo lab and did engineering stuff. I was going to work at 5 in the morning and coming home at 8 o'clock at night. I wanted to raise my kids, and I didn’t want to just work and pay somebody else to raise my kids. So, I wanted a job share, and they wouldn’t let women job share in those days, so I resigned. I imagined I’d still have my big high-powered engineering job with a lot of money. But I am not sorry in any way. I mean, I am glad that I quit that job, and made the choice to raise my family over making a lot of money. And it was a hard thing, because when I had that engineering job, I was the youngest person in the country to open a computerized one-hour photo lab. And I ran the machines in a color balance, did the chemistry, hired people, did payroll, and all that stuff. So, whenever I told anybody that’s what I did they were like

‘Oh wow, that’s so cool!’ ‘That’s really neat!’

That’s like, you know, they compared it to, like, being a doctor or doing something amazing and then when I quit that job some of the same people would be like

‘So what do you do?’

and I’m like

‘Well, I stay at home and raise my kids.’

And, they looked at me like ‘Oh okay, well I don’t really want to talk to you. You’re not interesting’, and I felt underneath that I was the same person no matter which thing I did and because I did have that experience. In the beginning, I wasn’t as hard on myself so I thought, “You know what, I really don’t care what other people thought.” And I just raised my kids, and it went really fast, and I don’t think that I would ever change it. I am not ever sorry that I didn’t follow that other path because my kids are all grown, and it went super fast. I still love math and science. I’m a total geek. I like quantum physics and all that kinds of stuff. And I still dabble in all that kinds of stuff in my private life. But I never would have imagined myself to be a teacher. No, I just fell into it, and it was the right thing, and I mean it’s a good thing. I feel like I have a chance to influence girls to choose math and science, technology, and stem activities and not be afraid of those kinds of things.

A Look Into The Life Of Jakki
(Photo Credits: http://www.fieldingnair.com/projects/pratt-community-school/)

The New Calling

There was not a specific moment that assured me that I have found my calling- no, I don’t think so. I believe that it was rewarding in a different way. I mean, I think that you definitely make an impact on kids and since I’ve done this for so long. I have kids that have come back to me years and years later, and I know that when somebody comes back 25 years later to see their former teacher, that you know you’ve had an impact on them. One day I was out on the playground, and I was watching the whole group of kids. There was a man on the playground standing over by the rocks, and he kept looking at me and, you know, I thought “That’s kind of creepy” and “He doesn’t have any kids.” So I walked over to him, and I said

‘Hi! You know I am out here with the child care. Are you looking for a child? Are you coming to pick someone up?’

And he said

‘No. Don’t you remember me?’

‘Noo?’  

‘It’s me, David!’

‘Really? Oh, David!’

And then I recognized him, and he was one of the kids that I have taught, and he pulled out from behind his back Time Magazine, and he opened it up, and he had a picture of himself in the magazine and said,

‘I’m the youngest delegate for the Democratic party for Obama! I just wanna come by to show you.’

David was very proud of himself and came by to let me know he has done well with his life. So I was glad he wasn’t a creeper (laughs). I was glad I was nice and walked over and just talked to him.

Going with that, I definitely think I have motivated others to take up my career. Two of my daughters are teachers. One of them teaches first grade over in North Minneapolis in Jenny Lind and the other teaches kindergarten in Frogtown over at Galtier in St. Paul.

Pratt Community School
(Photo Credits: http://pratt.mpls.k12.mn.us/history)

A Worthwhile Experience

I guess my work has taught me the same thing that I want to take the kids to learn: to just step out of your comfort zone and risk failure. I mean, take a chance- do something that you don’t know that you can do. Try something, and once something doesn’t work, don’t worry about changing it. Just try something else. If somebody was to come into a job to work with kids. I would think to be positive and that if it's not something that makes you happy, then you shouldn’t do it. Because kids know, they can see through you. They’ll know if you like them or like what you’re doing or if you don’t, then you shouldn’t be there. That kind of a thing. You know, making sure that you’re not only flexible, but you don’t get too stuck into having things to be a certain way.

I don’t think there are moments that have changed the way I thought about my job. I think that it just reinforced that the job was important. I mean it's definitely a memorable job and working with kids- they are very fresh, and it's always new and it’s unexpected what they’ll do. You never can plan for exactly how it goes and I think that was one of the things that was a challenge. I believe engineering is very linear, and it is very mathematical. Step A leads to step B, then step B leads to step C, and when the steps are all in order, you get this. But working with kids, they are all over the place. So it is not linear in that way, and you might try this thing with one kid and something else completely different happens. So it's a challenge in that way of being flexible and trying a variety of different things to get an outcome you want. Another challenge is that staffing is hard because the pay is very low, so I feel like our society doesn’t value child care. They pay somebody to sweep the floor twice as much as they pay somebody to take care of 40 kids. So I think pay is bad and it makes it so people don’t stay in this career very long.

There are rewarding moments all the time, and they are always little. There are little things that other people might not notice, but seeing kids getting confidence and be able to do things that they didn’t think they could do is definitely rewarding. We do a play every year and seeing even some of the kids that are afraid get on stage, get on stage at the end and finally do an excellent job and feel really proud of themselves. It’s nice helping kids step out of their comfort zone and risk failure I guess, and not worry that it’s going to damage them. And most importantly, know that what you do, does make a difference.

Jakki And Her Family
(Photo Credits: Jakki)