The Highest Promotion: A Working Mom Reflects On Becoming Her Kids’ Preschool Teacher During the Pandemic
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Finance director Brena Cascini (38) has finally found her footing after 18 months on a job she had no experience in but would become the most important gig she’s yet to take on: as the home preschool teacher for her two kids. Though she and her family have been back on the Upper West Side since September of last year, her quarantine stint in their Altamont, NY home is something she still reflects on. “I’m generally not a person who has a ton of patience, although working with politicians definitely helped.”
Prior to the pandemic, Cascini was doing fundraising and development work at a political consulting firm where she was accustomed to goal and result driven assignments with clear expectations to achieve. Homeschooling was not exactly as clearcut. “There were a lot of hair pulling moments where it felt like these kids aren’t ever gonna learn anything,” she says with a knowing laugh. “With a lot of kids, or at least with my kids [5-year-old Dylan and 3-year-old Henry], they’re not necessarily consciously aware of the emotions that they’re processing. So they act out in a lot of different ways. It’s not like, ‘Mom I’m upset that I’m going back to school.’ It’s more like, ‘I’m gonna throw stuff!’”
Cascini prepared her best for the task back when NYC was at a standstill in March 2020 with the increase of COVID-19 cases. She began to study the Montessori method of education, which focuses on self-directed learning and sensory, collaborative play. Cascini says she designated and arranged a preschool room in their upstate home with specific areas for different types of activities called “work.” But having easy access to the outdoors made her job of keeping the kids engaged and in one place all the more difficult, causing her to feel like it was resulting in a failure.
Until one day, when Cascini found Dylan and Henry in the garden, having escaped their imposed routines, digging into the dirt and building something together. “I thought about it and realized this is actually what I want them to do. I want them to interact with their environment in a way that is facilitating learning something that felt like they could be a little more independent.” She realized that what seemed like a reason to be disappointed was actually a victory, much like her drawn-out return to upstate New York.
Though Brena was raised there, she’s lived in New York City since graduating college with little desire to go back to where she grew up. She and her husband Keith acquired their Altamont house as a way to provide their kids a balance from city life and to be closer to her parents. But two years ago when she took what was supposed to be a weekend trip, she didn’t expect to be gone for a year and a half. In retrospect, the reprieve from the fast pace of city life allowed her to reconsider what it was she wanted for her future, and she eventually decided she would not be going back to her old job.
“Ultimately, I view it now as a positive thing and as something that brought different opportunities to my life.” With her kids now back in private school, she’s begun to evaluate how the world merits childcare. “It’s an interesting thing for our society to grapple with — how do we value that labor? What does that mean when we talk about equality at the work place? Or just generally, divisions of labor between men and women? I can’t even think of one example where the caregiving tasks, in all the families I know, have fell more to the dad than the mom.” But she has no regrets. “As long as [Dylan and Henry] are not at a permanent disadvantage with their education, then I’m good. And I don’t think I did any damage. I think they’re gonna be just fine.”
