Tanya K.

Meet Tanya

• Comfortable with pets

I have always enjoyed working with children. In fact, its my favorite population of people to work with! My high-energy, kind, and playful spirit is often what makes children gravitate towards me. I'm usually the person that comes into someone's house, and after a few minutes of me getting down to eye-level with someone's child and and being playful, nurturing and receptive has the child following me around the house for the rest of the day. My friends call me the "kid-whisperer". I've slayed quite a few 'monsters', drank hundreds of cups of imaginary tea and know the plasticy taste of toy food being shoved into your mouth by a persistent child chef. In high school, my friends grandmother enlisted me to help her with her in-house daycare center. I was 16 with no car, living in the Poconos, so this was the best summer job I could get, since Read more it was in walking distance of my house. At this "daycare center" I watched up to 10 kids at a time aging from 6 months to 9 years old. What I did not know was that what my friend's grandmother meant by help, was more like "do everything while I watch Oprah upstairs". I warmed breast milk, prepared lunches, changed diapers, gave piggyback rides, read books, gave puppet shows and so much more. Albeit I was being paid horribly due to my teenage naivety, it was a cool summer job. In college in NYC, I held a position with an Americorps early childhood education program calls Jumpstart. I served inside of various inner-city preschools, fostering literacy, social development and positive adult-child relationships. It was there that I learned the importance of structure; learning through play and consistency when working with children. I served with Jumpstart for three years. During the summers I worked with Afterschool Allstars CampUS program which bused in over 1000 children (7-14) from New York City Housing Authority developments onto my college campus for two weeks of education and recreation. I was a mentor, teacher's assistant as well as group-leader ushering kids around our sprawling campus. i received the Allstar Mentor award there for my work. On June 20th 2014 I completed a year of service with AmeriCorps City Year. I served inside of a 7th grade ELA A.S.D NEST classroom for 10 months. I received CPR certification during this time as well as garnering skills working with children with disabilities. In this time, I also decided to become a pediatric occupational therapist. :)

Trust & safety

Experience