What does it mean to see me.........

“Do you know me?      Do you let me fly?    Do you hear me?   

Is this place fair for us?    Can I trust you?

May, Carr, Podmore (2001)

For years the words of May, Carr & Podmore have influenced my view on teaching, learning and leadership.  I have always thought that everyone involved in the professional life of the centre should be able to answer yes to each of these questions.  More recently I have focused on, "Do you know me' by asking 'what does it mean to see me?'  How would you the reader answer that question, what does it mean for your colleagues to truly see you, what does it mean for you to truly see the child?  What sort of environments, values, teaching practices do we need in order to allow ourselves to be seen?  For me I think one of the restrictions of being seen are the labels we use to categorise people.  For example the age label which is what I want to ponder on with you.

Te Whāriki (2017) certainly encourages us to see children as individuals, "Each child learns in their own way, which means there can be a wide variation in the rate and timing of learning and in developing the capacity to apply new knowledge and skills in different context.  This is reflected in the saying, 'ā tōna wā."  Yet we still separate children into age batches and in some cases think the 4 year olds are magically different on the date of their birthday and offer some sort of schoolified response to being 4.  Sir Ken Robinson said,  "Why is there this assumption that the most important thing children have in common is how old they are? It's like the most important thing about them is their date of manufacture."  Do we want to be seen for who we are by our age, does age define our abilities, passions, interests, goals, culture, the richness of who we are as a unique human beings?  Te Whāriki also reminds us through the whakatauki (pg. 63) Mā te ahurei o te tamaiti e ārahi ī ā tātou mahi - let the uniqueness of the child guide our work.  

              

Peter Gray also talks about free age mixing in his video Self Directed Learning Fundamentals,  saying, "children don't have anything to learn from children of the same age as themselves"

For years now we have established centres that divide children in to any thing from 2 to 6 age group rooms.  This practice means that potentially children can have up to 5 transitions before they head off to school.  I remember listening to Nathan Wallis several years ago and he said in terms of brain research it would be valuable for children to have the same teacher right through primary school, imagine then the importance of these secure based attachment relationship for children up to 5.  Lorraine Sands wrote in her article Connection: The beating heart that drives learning, "Gone are the days when we thought a little distance was necessary between a teacher and a child, a little objective professionalism. Neuroscience research gives us all the rationale we need to justify emotional connection (Gerhardt, 2011; Gopnik, 2010; Grille , 2015). What we have to do, as teachers working inside the myriad of settings here in Aotearoa New Zealand, is stand up and advocate for the conditions that will nurture connection and stay in children’s lives." This is something that many centres thoughtfully consider, finding ways to ensure children continue to have a touch stone teacher. It is not just about the teacher relationship though, it is also whanaungatanga and ako values that underpin wise practice.  There are mixed age settings where there are several whānau rooms ensuring children stay connected to the teachers and their friends throughout their learning journey with the centre.  No transitions, no age separating just connection.

How did this batching of children by age all start I wonder?  Was it in response to centres becoming bigger, was it a left over idea of centre's being separated into different licensed spaces, I don't know but my guess is that it was seen as a way of 'managing' children and spaces in a way that was easiest for teachers, managers and ownership.  Too harsh do you think?  But this has been the reality in the past for some aspects of education.  Thankfully we now have the neuroscience to help us with the important decisions, we just need to listen, ponder, reflect and well...... do something.

If we dig a little deeper and think about the uniqueness of teaching and learning in New Zealand and how we are shaped by te ao Māori view of traditions and culture we would consider these words, "Children learned from their whanaunga and were socialised under the tuakana-teina principle. Older adults and siblings were their teachers." (Traditional Māori Parenting).  This was a value and way of growing community, which is possibly under-valued in ECE now or at least under represented by our centres.  In How Children Learn about Responsibility the teachers from Daisies talk about the outcomes of fostering tuakana/teina relationships or in their words focusing on whanaugnatanga they wrote, "Teachers have also noted a significant change in the children’s language with each other. There is much more negotiation and compromise. The children’s attitude towards helping themselves and others has improved. The development of their own self-help skills has empowered them to help their peers."  Tuakana/teina relationships develop ako and a sense of whanaungatanga amongst children.

Neuroscience researcher, Dr Bruce Perry said at a conference I attended that the modern western world is only just catching up the what the indigenous cultures have known all along.  Have we?  We are still building conveyor belt education systems that move children along in their year of manufacture groups.  

The continuation of having age separated early childhood centres rather than mixed age setting could be given closer consideration by teachers.  Is this the only option you have?  If you value the neuroscience research, our indigenous culture and values then you could put the question of free age mixing under the internal evaluation reflective gaze and find other ways of being.

My final pondering, in a society where we hear more and more about social behaviours and as Sir Ken Robinson said the perceived rise of ADHD what are we doing differently to have contributed to this.  One of the things is we have removed the view of the child as an individual, not seeing them for who they are but by 'what they are'.  We have lost the common sense of tuakana/teina relationships that helps to grow communities where children are seen as socially and emotionally competent  and trusted to learn alongside each other.  Learning to negotiate the trickiness of being in communities that consider what is fair and kind, to listen to each others perspective and to grow interdependence as well as independence.  Words of Mere Berryman have stuck with me, she said, "I want you to know who I am not what I am....."

https://mylearning.nzei.org.nz/taking-the-lead-celebrating-our-curricula/berryman/

Next blog post will be about seeing children by gender......