A community that learns

Many days I sit at my desk willing a Facebook post to hit my inbox and nothing comes.... and then today ...when I am on vacation of course ... 3 very compelling posts come in. 

When we made the decision to invite parents into our curriculum as real partners in exploring the children's thinking, we were afraid.  Afraid parents wouldn't show up, or that they would show up wouldn't understand what we were sharing , or wouldn't participate as we hoped.   This anxiety had kept us from diving into curriculum meetings for too long so we jumped in. 

And what an amazing journey it has been and how much richer the SRCC is for this meeting up together to share thinking and perspectives in service of the children.  Parents have wholeheartedly showed up and offered their perspectives and ideas and been so touched to have this insight into their children's thinking and exploration.  Educators have gained so much joy and confidence from sharing their work that is so often not visible.  They feel seen and energized and ready to take the investigation and curiosity of the children to a new level. 

Our ritual usually includes the children leaving something for the families to discover in the program and then, in turn, the families leave something for the children to discover the next morning when they return.  The children understand this exchange of gifts and revel in the giving and the receiving of them and it is a joy to see their knowing that this place and their work in it matter to their families. 

I used these quotes at our recent AGM from our friend Ann Pelo's new book "From Teaching to Thinking"

“ A community that learns is in continual construction of collective understandings born of multiple perspectives coming together.  This isn’t easy! The give-and-take of authentic exchange does not mean happy-dappy, easy-as-pie congeniality.  Authentic relationships ask that we offer ourselves to each other; that we consider difficult and complex circumstances together; that we argue, we make mistakes, we disagree.  We join together as comrades and collaborators, yes, and also with people quite different from ourselves, people who challenge and vex us”

“Dialogue is not simply ‘talking to each other’ – swapping points of view and leaving you to ‘make up your mind’.  It involves being prepared to wrestle with another’s perspective.  Dialogue is a collaborative act.”

Take a moment to consider this excerpt with a few lenses – as a child in our program, as an Educator, as a leader, as a parent… share your thoughts with the person or people around you for a minute or two.

“ This sort of dialogue is at the heart of a community that learns.  It is a courageous act in a brave space in a culture of inquiry that prizes questions more than answers, values complexity, and uncertainty, honours insight and imagination, and is committed to the shared construction of knowledge and understanding.  Genuine collaboration requires brave space, and a community that learns requires genuine collaboration.” 

I hope you will see from the 3 reports from 3 different Curriculum meetings how the SRCC is living in to being a community the learns.  Bravo to all the Educators and parents investing in that.

Cook Road Children's Centre

Last night our Parent Curriculum meeting was held at Cook Road Children's Centre.. Sharing with the parents their children's and our journey to discover the science of shadow and reflection was a humbling experience. We struggled to support the children's learning but their enthusiasm was so energizing and compelled us to continue this investigation. Admitting to the parents that we do not always have an answer started the dialogue and brought us closer together. The children's fascination of  the shadow puppet show prompted us to ask the parents to make a puppet for their own child. During this activity we noticed that some parents struggled and needed help. It just showed that we all are humans and we need each other. Especially working with children, we value each family's input , this work can not be done without you.

Thank you!

Cranberry Children's Centre IT Program

"Our I/T parents had the opportunity to explore the deeper meaning of their children's interest in cars and transportation toys during our parent meeting night.  After exploring our classroom, we discussed questions involving what we placed our identity in in our childhood whether it be a place, colour, talent/skill as well as discuss their children's favourite places they love to visit and probably travelled there by car.  This may evoke such excitement and joy in the children to travel to a variety of places through  different forms of transportation.  As the children investigate their love of cars and their identity in this complex world, we encouraged the parents to give back an offering of themselves to their children by making a collage to be placed on the floor of all the favourite places their families love to visit.  It was wonderful to collaborate with the parents regarding their ideas of what their children are learning about and we are excited to see how the children respond to the collage their parents created for them!"

Gardens 3-5 Program

On Wednesday, November 28th, Gardens 3-5 program Educators welcomed parents to participate in our first curriculum meeting. We had a wonderful opportunity to come together as a community to have dialogue about our children’s investigation of spiders. Parents shared their own experiences with spiders and then the educators offered them provocations that had inspired their children over the course of a few months. Parents were creating webs, drawings, and used playdough to represent their own thoughts. We all felt that it was a great way to start our relationship with the families as partners in our curriculum, as well as our own confidence and skills to have these meetings











I am so proud of our learning community!!!

Nicky

Our newest centre

Click on this link for a little glimpse of Gardens Children's Centre

https://nickybyres.blogspot.com/2018/06/licensed.html

Parents learning about Play

It has been a busy week for SRCC Parents with 3 centres having their Fall Family Meetings.

Terra Nova invited parents to experience and understand the use of loose parts at the centre.  The children had left some impressive creations for their parents who, after considering them, made some changes and left the children with very exciting new creations to use.  Through this process parents experienced the work of collaborating, negotiating for and manipulating materials and exchanging ideas.   It was a rich and deep night of dialogue and new understandings and appreciation.  Each family brought some loose parts to add our inventory - thank you so much TNCC families! 

Cook Rd invited families in to share with them how the children have been experiencing a sense of belonging, learning about acceptance, and discovering diversity in their program.  Their intimate gathering enhanced a deep feeling of connectedness to the centre and to the work happening.  Honest and deep questions were asked and staff were able to foster a deeper understanding of the children they work with.  The parents collaborated with one another and painted beautiful art to share with the centre and the children - learning lessons of sharing space and materials as they did so (a parallel to what the children do everyday!)

Bowling Green Rd Toddlers invited families to explore magna tiles, blocks and recycled materials and the ways these are used by their children in the program. Of course toddler parents were very interested in how to manage toddlers and amazed at the work they do at the centre when at home they can be challenging.  Toddlers are such complex humans - equal parts competence and challenges!  

We are so appreciative of the parents who come out and engage with us in these evenings.  We want to share as much as we can with you about these important times the children are having at the centres.  We want to work in partnership with you and give you a window into the competence and creativity of your children.  

We have found these meetings to be rich and deep and connecting for Educators and Parents alike.  We'd love to hear from you about your experiences and other things you might like to meet about?

Thank you for partnering with us to "Change the world by honouring childhood"

Nicky

Communities of Practice

We believe this at the SRCC - that learning and teaching should be fully integrated and that the best Educators are the ones who see themselves as artists and scientists and researchers, always on the quest to satisfy curiosity - their and/or the children's. 

When we look at how to offer professional development that meets the needs of our Educators we look at what we want to offer the children.  Then we step back and ask "what skills do we need more of, or to hone?".  Then we work together to offer opportunities for those skills to flourish.

One way we have used over the years is Communities of Practice.

A community of practice is a group of people who share something in common or want to learn a common subject together.

We have had two rounds of Communities of Practice in the past with the whole SRCC and have found them to be powerful in advancing our curriculum and connecting Educators from all our programs.

This time our curriculum leadership team identified 3 topics about which our Educators are expressing a desire to deepen their knowledge and skills.

So in the height of summer we offered all Educators the opportunity to voluntarily sign up for one of the following communities of practice:

1. The art of writing documentation
2. The Educator as Researcher
3. Exploring Representational Thinking

These would be 4 sessions over 4 Wednesday evenings - 2 hours per session. 

18 Educators jumped at the chance to dive into their own learning. We quickly had a waitlist but intentionally wanted to keep the groups intimate in the hope that good discussion would be possible.

As with most SRCC events we gather over food at 6:15pm all together. We catch up, chat, collaborate and nourish our bodies.  This may not look like Professional Development but the community building that happens over a meal strengthens collaboration across the SRCC and that is key to our success.

We then break into our communities and spend some time exploring the topic and thinking deeply.  

All participants are sent out with tasks to be accomplished before the next week.

Jennifer is leading the Teacher as Researcher group, Helen the Representational Thinking group and I am leading the Writing group.

It is immensely gratifying to see our Educators from across all 5 of our Centres committed to investing in their own competencies and being willing to stretch into new thinking and practice. This commitment makes us a stronger organisation and helps us to more fully live into our vision and values.

My hats off to Jennifer and Helen for all their preparation and to every Educator who has shown up physically and intellectually in the pursuit of excellence
we all share.

Way to go #TeamSRCC

We will run these same sessions in the Fall/Winter to accommodate those Educators who were unable to get into these sessions.

Parent Perspectives

On our 10 year journey into the world of emergent / responsive / Reggio-inspired curriculum with the guidance of our colleagues at Hilltop Children's Centre, London Bridge Children's Centres and Ann Pelo we have have changed so many things, learned new ways of working alongside the children and facilitating their investigations and explorations. 

One of the things we had really not yet mastered was inviting parents into those investigations to understand what their children were doing at the centre and what their thinking is about that and how they might help us with new insights and participate in a meaningful way in the investigation and help us deepen the curriculum for the children.

We worried parents wouldn't want to take the time to dive into this work with us.  We wanted to honour their perspectives and have them participate in a meaningful way but we know how busy they are. 

So we didn't do it. 

But in 2017 Jennifer and I decided that we needed to be bold  - we really wanted to build stronger relationships with parents and build the SRCC Community. 

So we challenged all our programs to hold a Family Meeting before the end of summer 2017.

Two programs were ready and to go very quickly and last night both the West Cambie Infant and Cranberry Spies work group families came into the programs and learned what their children have been working on, gave us their perspectives and thinking,  and left something for the children and program before they left. 

Cranberry Spies
A group of children at Cranberry have been playing "Spies" for a while.  Educator Dominique paid close attention to the play and what was driving it.  Why is being a spy so exciting?  What can spies get up to that regular children cannot?  What tools do spies need? 

She shared her observations and documentations with the parents of the spies and they told us it helped them make sense of what the children were playing at home.  After a lively sharing of documentation and conversation the parents were invited to make some spy gadgets to leave in the classroom to surprise the spies.  As the gadgets took shape there was more conversation and the topic of a future discussion emerged.  It was a powerful night of collaboration and thinking and discussion and fun.  

West Cambie Infants
As the babies language is emerging the staff have been exploring a range of language and literacy experiences with the infants using a variety of materials.  They invited parents into this story and explained their intentions around their work and  what they had discovered about the children in this group and about language development.  They then offered parents the opportunity to write a story to their child using the photos they had been requested to bring in.  The stories were up in the room this morning when the children arrived this morning and they were so intrigued and delighted!  A great night of mutual understanding and relationship building with and among parents.

We hope the parents who participated found the experience valuable and we hope that when other parents are invited to participate you will do so with curiosity and enthusiasm as we work together to "Change the world by honouring childhood".

An ordinary moment unpacked

The following photos with a short write-up were sent to me for a Facebook post today but I was immediately struck by a couple of things that bear a little closer look.

On the face of this it was a very ordinary moment.  

Moments like these are replicated across the SRCC many many times a day. 

Let's unpack it a bit to see what is really going on here:

1.  Jolanta was thinking about the week ahead - knowing it was going to be hot.  She decided making popsicles today meant they could be enjoyed later in the week.  This is a thinking/planning Educator.  She could have made the popsicles in 5 minutes and popped them in the freezer. 

2. However Jolanta has a very high "image of the child" - she sees them as capable so she asked the children if they would like to help her with her task.  They readily agreed as they too could see there would be real benefits from this work.

3.  Jolanta gave them the tools and then allowed them to do the work.  The work of measuring, estimating, careful eye-hand coordination, social sharing of tasks and taking on new vocabulary.  In this moment the children are unknowingly laying the foundation of literacy, math and science concepts.  Their brains are working hard and storing up this new experience for when the things learned from it will be recalled.  They know to pour slowly, to full things up to the top, to share their ideas and the work.

4.  At this point the popsicles could have been popped into the freezer and all would be done.  But, understanding how much learning was going on here, Jolanta asked - "What do we do now?".  The children paused.  They have a notion that these popsicles need to cool and get hard but they don't yet have all the the knowledge they need. Jolanta encouraged them to discuss their theories and make a decision together about where the popsicles should go.

5.  The children made a consensus driven choice to put them in the fridge.  You and I know, given our years of knowledge building, that this is not the correct place for popsicles but in this moment Jolanta just offered the children an opportunity to concretely discover the properties of water and temperature and their effect on one another.

6. When the popsicles don't set the children will revisit their theories and make another choice.  They are smart and they will likely deduce they need to be colder and they will ask them to be moved to the freezer.  There will be no shame in this - it will be a natural part of the process of solving the problem of how popsicles freeze.  And how great will be the learning - their learning, from their actions, and their thinking.  They will not soon forget that in order for a liquid to freeze it needs to be in a freezer. 

7.  After work there is clean up.  Jolanta continues to demonstrate her belief in children's capacity to learn when she offers them an opportunity to clean up the table after their work.  She helps them see that taking care of the place and space you work in is part of doing good, important work.

And so in this brief, morning moment, so much learning has taken place.  It takes a skilled Educator to see the opportunity and facilitate it.  

We call this "learning through play" and we mean it - the children learn so much each and every day as we facilitate their exploration of their interests and thinking.  

THIS is our work.  Thanks to Jolanta and Jennifer for the insight.