[maria warren]

I feel that a culture of trust and honesty, being reliable, approachable, I will help, I will listen, I am fun , available to children during play time(on the floor), caring person, loving person, my curiousness to watch children play and relationships unfold, are all qualities that influence my relationship with children, families educators and colleagues.
I don’t feel I want to unravel any threads but continue to build strong relationships with people that I have interactions with. The few things that will change are due to the Covid, is that we continue to think outside the box to support each other and support programs with projects in their classroom and support everyone in feeling safe and secure(families, children,and educators) to come back to work.
What struck me with the article that all 4 foundations were touched upon(well being, belonging, engagement and expression) Educators listened with their eyes as well as their ears. They allowed the project to take on a new life . How important are our senses with children and how they see the world around them. How important children are in their community and so inclusive as a whole community. And finally how mindful the educators were of the children insites and how much time it took to complete the projects as seen from the pictures
Thank you for listening to my thoughts

[Ingrid Pederson]

This article as well as the workshop made me want to delve into more studying and conversations about: These different ideas, some are from conversations from others and some are from myself I would love your input 😊
Like how a certain smell can bring back memories, something from your childhood
Sharing stories had always been important to me, both reading as well as spoken stories, I feel I learn best from these stories.
As we move towards returning to the daycare, what ‘ Stories’ will you remember about these times, from the social distancing to the technology?
Karyn Callaghan mentions in the workshop about how educators weave different ideas together
What does it do to your thinking if we consider that our practices are structured on an ecology of relationships that include time and materials
Is there a way you could apply these stories to help children as we all adjust to a new way of being together?
What has influenced the kinds of relationships you have had with the children, families, and colleagues in the context you are weaving,
Are their any threads that you would like to unravel?
Any you would like to change?
How are our values woven into our days through time, inclusion, creativity, citizenship, relationships and listening
Each time I read the article I see and feel something new

[Karyn Callaghan]

Thanks for your responses, Maria and Ingr. I know that when I was working with children and when I was teaching ECE students, I felt like I was standing on solid ground. I had learned about child development and curriculum planning and parent education. So solid was that ground in fact, that it might have been difficult for other thoughts about how to view children and families and teaching to break that soil. I know that for the first half of my career, I did not listen as deeply as I should have, or give sufficient thought about how to keep children’s ideas alive and challenged, to bring them together to think and consider each other’s ideas, to connect the children and the community in a substantial way. If we do not cultivate a sense of unrest with the ground we are on, we are apt to stand still. We will not know how different it could be. I wanted the interactions among the children to be pleasant, I wanted the students to work collaboratively and responsibly, but didn’t fully recognize their potential to challenge each other to grow big ideas together. And then in the mid-nineties, I encountered the revolutionary question, “What is your view of the child?”

Malaguzzi writes that there is a wall that can keep us from going beyond what we know, but “beyond the wall there is always a beyond”. Our responsibility as educators is to look beyond “the wall of habit, of custom, of the normal, of the non-surprise, of assumed security”. The more we learn, as Paolo Freire says, to read the world, the wider our sense of it and ourselves becomes. Therein lies joy – in the always more.

So, what kind of relationships do we want to nurture when programs open up again? Some changes will be thrust upon us – understandably given the health crisis we have been in – but we have so much more ability to shape our daily lives with children than we recognize. There can be a temptation to rationalize the status quo rather than to question it and conduct research into our own decisions about how we will be alongside children and families and deepen our connection to the communities where we are located. Are we ready to have the kinds of conversations among our colleagues and with children and families that will contribute to more democratic ways of being, where different perspectives are welcomed? Can we invite colleagues to help us to recognize when we are being pulled back to that solid ground, and nudge us into the generative space of curiosity and uncertainty?

[Author]

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