Australia's Silent Epidemic; it’s preventing good early year’s sites and services from demonstrating excellence.
Preface
The following is not intended
as a sales letter though it makes reference at the end to resources I have
developed to support my Early Years colleagues. It outlines my personal
struggle in leadership and is my experience, journey and opinion. I am happy for
you to share it in its entirety or in parts if you find it relevant.
Here we go .....
Is it just
me? I don't think so. In fact, I know so. Early years carers, educators and
leaders are frazzled, frustrated and in many cases burnt out.
Why?
Is it the myths
and misconceptions we hold about what is required of us in our current roles,
in the current educational climate of new regulations and frameworks? Do we do
it to ourselves? No, there has always and will always be changes in education
systems. As educators, we except, and expect this and have rolled with it for
decades. I believe it is the magnitude of multiple changes all at once and the
absence of support structures to assist in implementation and embedding into
practice. We were balancing the ‘Reflect, Respect and Relate: Observation Scales’
and devising clever inquiry questions when we were handed the EYLF and almost
immediately the NQS on top of it. We had no hands left. In comparison, look how
slowly and steadily the Australian Curriculum has been rolled out. That's
because when it was handed to school principals they had the strength and
courage to hand it back, knowing that they would support each other in their
refusal, that they would have one another's back, prepared to cause waves and
rock the boat if necessary, to avoid additional stress and pressure and to
maintain the dignity of their role. They said, 'The quality of my school,
wellbeing of my teachers and learning of my students would be compromised if I
agreed to such a task so no thank you, not until you tell me about and provide
me with the support structures I require in order to implement this
successfully. My teachers need training, release days and time to do this.'
Leaders in the early years must find this courage too.
The sad
fact!
I have
experienced it myself and witnessed it personally over the past year or two and
I bet you have too; Directors and team leaders stepping down from their role,
an increase in significant medical and emotional illness and leave from work,
family breakdowns and excellent, but bewildered, educators leaving the
profession they once loved (and often still do).
Why?
Lack of
understanding from the community, lack of support from demanding parents, lack
of funding from government departments and therefore lack of sufficient
administration time to do their job, the job they want to do to the best of
their ability. They want the best outcomes possible for their little learners
but there is no balance, most work many extra hours above their paid hours,
they have to in order to try to meet the expectations of their role, they
sacrifice time with their own families, time for their own professional and
personal interests and as for leisure time, what's that? They are left with a
deep aching conflict within themselves, the desire to make theirs the most
exceptional early year’s site ever but an overwhelming feeling of job
dissatisfaction because they are spread so thin they are unable to give 100% to
any of the tasks required of them. This is not about a cry for more pay, I
believe 99 out of 100 early years staff would just like a reasonable amount of
admin time to meet the requirements of their role, time to write meaningful
child observation records, to discuss and analyse the play program and plan
together, to enter attendances into their Early Years systems and to follow up
that issue that occurred today with a phone call to the parent - today.
Tell me why
a small country school site with an enrolment of 100 students can have a full
time Principal with no teaching load (and even a part-time deputy too) and yet
an integrated Kindy site with childcare facilities and an enrolment of 120
three and a half (early entry) to five and a half year olds (due to the 'same
first day' policy, I'm in SA) has a Director who is still required to teach two
days on the floor?
In many
sites, Directors, teachers and ancillary staff do not have breaks, they eat
with the children because children must be supervised at all times with certain
ratios but no additional staff has been employed/allocated to cover these ratio
requirements. Even staff toilet breaks are taken at rocket speed, so as not to
leave another staff member with too many children to supervise alone, the paper
is off the roll before your backside hits the seat. It sounds like some kind of
joke doesn't it? But, I am very serious. New young fresh graduates walk in with
big smiles, plans and high hopes, excitement and a genuine love for children
and go home by the end of their first week shaking their heads and asking 'This
can’t be right, can it?'
The fact is,
our early years sites and services are filled with maternal nurturing women
(mainly, though I respectfully acknowledge and admire our few male colleagues
dedicated to early years education) and they are wearing capes, scared that if
they express concern over current demands placed upon them, if they question,
complain, admit they need help or support, if they buckle under the strain or
don't dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ as required they may be stripped of at
worst, their job or what little super human powers that remain. Have I lost
you? I’m talking about those super powers which allow these dedicated educators
to miss their own children's Sports Days, Concerts, award ceremonies and school
assemblies so they can be there to act as teacher, advisor, guide, counsellor,
nurse etc to teach, challenge, develop imagination as well as water, feed,
bandage, tie shoelaces, wipe noses, and generally 'mother' other people's
children as if they were their own.
Do they
receive medals, certificates, praise (let alone appropriate financial
remuneration) or even just an occasional little ‘thanks’ for their choice, for
the sacrifice they make? Rarely, in fact they mainly hear from parents when
they wish to complain and bosses when they are requesting to add something more
to the already overflowing sink of (becoming very cloudy) dish washing water. A
commitment to continual improvement is one thing, I don't think there's many of
us that don't want to be the best we can be, but to continue to raise the bar
without proper acknowledgement of what has already been achieved is not just
unfair, it’s plain rude.
The National Quality Agenda was necessary and
long overdue, we all know why so I'm not going to go in to a lengthy rant about
it, and I am not disputing that. I personally believe the National Quality Standards
cover all they should and are well set out and written. I love the National
Early Years Learning Framework. I believe it captured the recognised and unseen
principles, practices and learning goals for children that Early Years
educators have been dedicated to, enacted and aspired to for many years. To me
it was like the old 'Teachers Work' document had been rewritten for the early
years. It defines what we already believed about community, parents, children
and learning, what we were already doing in practice and what we already aimed
for children to know and do before beginning school.
Now, with
implementation complete, QIP’s written and submitted, on-going assessment and validation
continuing and a new deep understanding permeating all we do, as we deal with
the continued lack of understanding, support, funding, and admin time, we need
to be kind to one another, support one another, encourage one another and
praise one another for all we have achieved in the Early Years over the past
two to three years. For our sanity, we must prioritise the most important
administration jobs, prioritise the needs of the children and let the rest go.
It is hard and we hate it but the children will survive without pre-entry
visits and huge bound scrapbooks of every painting they completed at Childcare.
Some things have to go. It’s time to work smarter, not harder.
I wonder if
maybe the next time we are handed that new massive framework of expectations we
will have the strength and courage to hand it back, but likely we'll continue
to be superheroes, waiting for the understanding, support, funding and time we
need to make our good Early Years sites and services places of excellence.
Written by Andrea Doyle, Teacher, Leader, Learner and Business Owner of Teaching Made Easy
‘Teaching Made
Easy’
During
her Master Class, renowned author and educator, Maggie Dent, examines the role
of stressors and explores ways to de-stress and relax to deal with the unique
challenges of our teaching profession. We believe our ‘Teaching Made Easy’ resources
compliment Maggie’s message perfectly.
In fact, I designed the ‘Teaching
Made Easy – Child Observations’ app and ‘EYLF Made Easy’ programming and planning package after reading
numerous blogs of educators crying out for help and after working as a
Preschool Director and suffering health issues and stress brought about by the
new requirements of the National Quality Agenda and implementation of the Early
Years Learning Framework. Both ‘Teaching Made Easy’ resources aim to streamline
the documentation demands of busy time-poor teachers to allow less time on
paperwork and more quality time spent with children.
The ‘Teaching Made
Easy - Child Observations’ app is a recording and reporting tool developed
to assist educators in continuous documentation and assessment to meet the
needs of individual learners. It allows users to easily develop a Child Profile
Folder as they collect photographic evidence and align their learning story to
the outcomes of current national curriculum frameworks (EYLF and the Australian
Curriculum) and to identify extension ideas and intentional teaching
opportunities.
You can view more screenshots & download your FREE ‘Teaching
Made Easy, Child Observations’ app here:
We recommend you check it out and see if it would be an
observation tool that might work for you.
The ‘EYLF Made Easy’
programming and planning package can be found in the featured products section
of our ‘Teaching Made Easy Print’ website. www.teachingmadeeasy.com.au
Please send me an email to info@teachingmadeeasyprint.com.au
if you would like more information or would like me to send you some samples.
If you are still not sure, join over 5,500 ‘Teaching Made
Easy’ fans on our facebook page, and talk to other early year’s educators about
why they love the support, features and benefits of ‘Teaching Made Easy’
resources.
No comments:
Post a Comment