New Breed of Nanny: Have Diploma, Will Travel

Graduates of the California Nannie College in Sacramento know that the ideal height for a newborn’s mobile is 8 to 12 inches above the crib.

They also know how to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation, recognize signs of dyslexia and autism in youngsters and negotiate contracts with their employers.

Those bits of information are part of what students enrolled in the only private, nationally accredited nanny school in the country learn during an intensive 15-week training program.

And with an average of six to 12 students per session, administrators say graduates do not have any trouble finding jobs after they receive their diplomas. If anything, nannies have to be encouraged to take enough time to find the right employers.

Mary Poppins Image

Nannies in this day and age? The word conjures up images of starched collars, prim and proper children and, by contrast, the most unconventional nanny of all, Mary Poppins.

But today’s nannies are a new breed. The six students enrolled at California Nannie College range in age from 19 to over 50.

Gloria Callahan, 19, from Lakeport, decided to become a nanny after meeting the woman who cares for a child of Ralph Lauren’s photographer.

“She travels all over the world,” Callahan said.

For Juliana Montgomery, 19, child care has been almost a calling.

“I’ve always known I wanted to work with kids,” said Montgomery, whose friends call her Julie Nanny instead of Juliana. “I remember making a baby stop crying when I was 4 years old, coming home and looking in the mirror thinking, ‘It must be something in my eyes.’ ”

Pictures in Her Wallet

Montgomery still carries pictures in her wallet of some of the 79 children she has looked after. Their names and phone numbers are all neatly listed in her address book. She even has her own baby-sitter business card.

Montgomery heard about California Nannie College on a television show when she was in junior high school in Santa Rosa. Carolyn Curtis, the school’s founder, conceded that the school “wouldn’t still be here if it weren’t for newspapers and television.”

Curtis, a licensed marriage, family and child counselor, established the school in 1983 after having trouble finding day care for her young son.

“I spent 10 years building up my practice and wanted him to have the finest care so I could feel guilt free about going back to work,” Curtis said. Now, she joked, she has access to the best nannies in the country.

The school--with its unorthodox spelling of nanny/nannie--is a curious blend of professionalism and informality. Run on a shoestring, the school has one classroom. Its headquarters is a tiny room in a Sacramento office building, and the college employs only one full-time administrator.

Aspiring nannies must be 18 or older, have a high school diploma or the equivalent and have “an overwhelming love for children.”

But the course load is double that of most colleges, and students are required to get firsthand nanny experience while pursuing their studies. Courses include first aid for infants and children, child nutrition, child development, creative play, assertiveness training, effective parenting and employer/employee relations.

About 125 students have graduated from the school, including two men. But administrator Larry Uno said it is difficult to find students.

“In our society, we have never placed child care in a high position,” he said. “This is considered a baby-sitting job. . . . When prospective students tell their parents they want to enroll, they say, ‘You don’t want to be a baby sitter for the rest of your life.’

“Part of the school’s mission is not only to produce professional nannies but to begin to upgrade standards for child care,” Uno said.

The irony is that students pay tuition of $2,000--it goes up to $2,500 in October--to become well-qualified members of the low-status child-care profession. Uno and Clark are quick to concede that the field is not ripe with opportunities for professional advancement.

“The potential for burnout in this field is enormous,” Clark said. Most students come from small, rural towns, she added.

Most nannies earn about $200 a week, often including room and board, for working an average of five 10-hour days. One of the most common complaints among graduates, Uno said, is that the schedule leaves little time for an independent social life. One nanny, who accompanied her wards on a ski vacation to Colorado, said it “was like being in jail” to be on call 24 hours a day, surrounded by happy skiers.

“That’s why they need assertiveness training and negotiating skills to work that out,” said Margo Miller, a creative play instructor at California Nannie College. “It’s exactly why so many women work outside the home. Being isolated with kids inside the home is hard. There’s no adultness to it.”

But such concerns seem far from the minds of most of the aspiring nannies enrolled at the school.

“Money is not a big thing for me,” said Montgomery, who felt qualified to become a nanny without formal training but decided to enroll to increase her job opportunities.

Melissa Cluney, 19, decided to enroll two months before classes began.

“I’d been out of high school for two years and hadn’t done anything and decided to motivate myself,” Cluney said.

Like many of the students, she has begun to fantasize about her ideal family, which in her case will include toddlers and young school-age children.

“I don’t like young babies,” she said. “They make me nervous, and they’re not much fun, either. They can’t do much.”

Although the school does not offer a formal placement service, many families submit applications to the school for student review.

Job hunting is a tricky process, Uno said, because nannies have to screen their prospective employers as carefully as they are screened.

“Nannies have to be very tactful and diplomatic teachers of parents, obviously,” Uno said. And they have to ask some probing questions about their employers’ life style.

One interview ended when the nanny was asked how she felt about the use of recreational drugs. Firmly opposed, she cut short the interview.

“Ordinarily in a job interview, you’re not going to ask something like that, about their personal habits,” Uno said. “But it’s important for nannies to know. . . . One thing our nannies find out is once they are in a job, they get very attached to the children and it’s very hard to leave.”

Families will often do a lot to keep a nanny happy, too.

One nanny working in New Mexico decided it was time to return to Sacramento to go back to school. But when she announced her plans to her employers, they offered her one year’s tuition and expenses to stay with them for one more year. She did.

When a nanny working in Alaska decided to move back to California, her employers offered to pay off her new car if she would postpone the move for one year. She did.

Uno acknowledged that most employers are “very wealthy.” One graduate of the college works for Ed McMahon.

Far From Glamorous

But the everyday job of caring for children is far from glamorous, and even California Nannie College administrators wonder at times whether what they are doing makes a difference.

“We as faculty often wonder as we graduate a class, did they really learn anything,” Uno said.

But as he recalled a graduate who calmly administered CPR to an infant whose fever rose so fast it stopped breathing, Uno smiled with proud satisfaction.

“Then something like that comes up and they handle it well, and that tells us maybe our training is doing something.”