Orange City Life sat down with Ashleigh Corby from Nurture One Hill Street Children's Centre and talked about her profession in childcare.

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When did you start working in childcare?

I started working in childcare about four years ago, at the start of 2017. I began as a trainee at another centre at that point. I did my traineeship there and after that just wanted to branch out and start somewhere new to see how other childcare centres run things. That’s how I ended up at Hill Street and I’ve been here for almost three years. It’s been a great experience.

Was childcare a passion or an interest before you started working in the sector?

Yes, it was a passion of mine. I’ve loved kids ever since being a child, you know, having baby dolls and playing teachers when growing up – writing on little boards and pretending. Now I’m actually getting to do all of that for real.

What does your typical day look like at work?

Each day is unique in it’s own way. Every day we have our rotating system with different children who come on multiple different days, we do our morning teas, morning meetings, lunches, going outside and afternoon teas.

Listening to the kids’ stories, they’ll have lots of different things they’ll tell us throughout the week – what they did on a particular night or what they got up to on the weekend.

We’ve got a pretty high-paced schedule, especially for our pre-school room, we go through our curriculums. For instance, we’re doing our letters of the week currently, helping the kids with learning their letters and understanding words that start with those letters.

Every day is pretty busy [Ashleigh laughs], including all the unpredictable things like temperaments and accidents that happen because kids will be kids.

It can be exhausting some days, but you go home, and you know you’ve done the best you can for those kids in that day and made a difference in their life, whether they’ve learnt something or had a beautiful moment throughout the day.

No doubt, it’s quite a rewarding job?

It is very rewarding. You form a big bond with the children and their families as well. They trust us to be there with their kids and trust us to ensure they’re getting the best care we can provide them. Trust is a big thing; parents are entrusting us with their entire world essentially, and to have them to be so supportive and building relationships with them is very rewarding.

What do you love most about your job?

I definitely love the staff, they make it feel like a family here, it’s more than a workplace. Of course, the children, just the fact that they’re so excited to see you of a morning when you come in and they are just beaming with happiness to see you. I just love seeing all the children so happy and coming into work to see all my work family. It’s great, it’s what I love the most.

What’s your favourite place to go to in Orange?

I really love going to Mr Sushi King, it’s kind of my spot currently, I like to go there with friends and my boyfriend.