What does it mean to see me?

30 January 2020, Lynn Rupe

“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