Well, after spending a lunch with my fellow Macquarie graduates I have been reminded to get back on my blog and get writing again.
I do have a reasonable excuse - my relationship (of 8 years) ended, then I relocated back to my home town, Newcastle, and pretty much only just got back to the stage where pretty happy and chilled with my life as it stands... So surely that's a good enough reason.
However, there is heaps of change a foot in our field at the moment so there are a few things I'd like to briefly chat about before working through my huge pile of inspirational stuff that I have been systematically collecting with the best of intentions since last post
1. First and foremost - and because you know I love a bit of industrial relations/employee rights (cant live with a union official for 8 years without some of it rubbing off)- the Big Steps campaign is gaining some fantastic momentum at the moment and I hope everyone will try and do there best to get to the events all around the country. It's a really important to get everyone there - people in the field, parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles anyone who cares about our children and their current and future rights to have high quality care with adequately (I'd love to say well) paid staff who are valued for the awesome and very hard work they do every day. So get on board the campaign!!! If you can't attend the events, do something this week to raise awareness of the campaign - share a link, put up a poster at work, talk to your parents (or anyone) about the reality of our field and its current working conditions, if you are feeling brave contact your local politician! Here's the link....http://bigsteps.org.au
2. In other campaign news, the Teachers are Teachers campaign has been presented at parliament and has in principle support - but we still need to keep going to we see the results!
3. I am going to do a specific post on the importance of risk in early childhood - I have always been a fan (I'm the girl whose always secretly making the gross motor equipment higher) but was extra inspired by Paul Tranter's presentation at the recent KU conference. To get an idea of what I will be chatting about have a look on my Facebook page for the links to the Sydney Playground Project and the Playpod. There is some amazing resources to help you convince peers and families of the importance of getting the children out there testing their limits and using their imagination early as possible. Are you seeing much risk in early childhood environments?
4. While I have been fortunate to see some beautiful practice this year while going around and working casually at a number of centres, there has also been some alarming things. For example, worksheets - I have talked about this before and continue to pull my hair out at the fact that these are still out there... Some craft is ok but sitting a child down to do a worksheet is not best practice and there are so many ways you can find out the child's level in a fun engaging way without have to resort to worksheets. They will have plenty of opportunities to do these at school let's keep early childhood a place where learning is something that is achieved through play and is engaging and exciting and individualised. Are you seeing worksheets? What's your opinion of them? If you think they are valid, can you tell me why?
5. Finally, I wanted to quickly talk about an 'interesting' concept I saw lately. I recently had colleagues try to convince me that placing no toys /provisions in a playground would lead to a higher quality play. This was not a playground rich with natural resources and loose parts - this was a empty AstroTurf playground. This obviously was not successful and not only did the children not have anything to do - it undermines our profession. We can't on one hand argue that we are professionals and our job is complicated and significant and on the other provide no provisions for learning for the children. Has anyone else seen this argument around?
Anyway, that'll do to start the ball rolling... I'll post again soon :)
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nice post...
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