on Conversations with…Grownups?
Wow! It’s been a while! The adventure has begun—I am now a first-year PhD student.
The year is fresh, and we are still in the period of time where introductions are made, repeated once, and then repeated again a couple more times. The haze that settles over academic institutions in the summer has finally faded, and fall is asserting itself with greater force with each passing day. And, despite the excitement I feel, there is an interesting shift happening that is inviting me into new ways of wondering.
Earlier this week, over a lunch in our research group, a colleague of mine (another early educator who is now researching early childhood) mentioned how strange it was for them that the majority of their days were made of of what a child of theirs once referred to as “ ‘puter work’ ” That is, work that, despite being for children, about children, and directed toward children—meant communicating and interacting at the computer and, as a result, less interaction with children. I felt an instant resonance. Yes. They had touched on exactly what I had been feeling for the past months. Here we were, individuals whose days had been spent talking with, working with, collaborating with young children, in a room filled with adults. I then thought back to the conversations that I have been part of, outside of my coursework, in the past week alone:
A conversation where educators, researchers, and analysts, seated around a table in a mid-rise building overlooking a sprawling universityscape discuss, at turns broadly and specifically, what it will take to encourage people to think, seriously, about what it means to invest with intention in early childhood—to whom must we speak? When, where, and how must we advocate?
A group of educators gathered around a table after work one day for a conversation; snacks—Smartfood popcorn, Chex mix, and Spindrift in varying flavors—sit in the middle of the table. For nearly a full hour we sit together, laugh, think, and come to a new, shared, understanding of one another’s priorities, interests, insights, and goals—we don’t solve all of the problems in the field or the school, but, instead, we celebrate triumphs, listen intently to one another’s thinking, and wonder together at what is and what could be.
In my office on a video call, I sign on to begin work with educators in a time zone an hour ahead of me, at a distance of a few hundred miles. As they prepare to begin the school year, we plan to work together to chart a path toward collaborative inquiry with young children over the next span of months. Reflective journals in-hand, we begin to wonder: Who are we as educators and how did we arrive here? What is a child and who are the children we are preparing to welcome? What do these children deserve? What sorts of classroom spaces do we want to create for them?
At every level, we are talking about questions and challenges that evade easy answers, quick solutions, and come with loads of (relevant) context—and less professionally, baggage—that cannot and ought not be ignored. And at every level we are wanting to be heard, to hear one another—and in each of these spaces I feel as if I see us trying to break through walls to speak to one another.
How can, I am wondering more each day, these worlds really be linked? Or, maybe, thinking about these as seaparate worlds is all wrong. If someone has a better analogy, I would appreciate a suggestion—maybe we should think of it as a gestalt, to borrow an analogy from a paper I recently read. How do we support each of the components of this gestalt optimally in order to arrive at our ideal. Each component seems to need something different to function optimally, and yet also has as its foundation a core disposition that is beneficial to all of the parts. I am digressing—partially with intention and partially because even as I rack my brain, coming up with a visual of the framework for a beautifully integrated field eludes me. However, I am grateful that I am not the only human in pursuit of the answer.
I like to think that much of what I am learning, witnessing, and stewing on (in the moments between classes, discussions, readings, coding, and remembering to eat) will begin to help me arrive at some clarity around this question, whatever picture that clarity will yield. I am also starting to wonder if the answer isn’t ever-changing—after all, not only does what it means to be a child and to live a childhood change across time, culture, and circumstance, but the same goes for what it means to care for children, the expectations of systems of education, the expectations of schools and societies and so on. Everything is always changing, and so the ways that the field communicates between its various parts will also have to change, keep changing, and as it’s changing anticipate further change.
The phrase “process over product” is a maxim that holds sway in many early childhood spaces and one to which I heartily ascribe. However, I do wonder how useful this maxim is when thinking about the processes and outcomes that we consider when we speak of working for children. After all, lives and experiences are in the crosshairs—and lingering too long on a process that will ultimately lead to an outcome that puts children at risk, at a disadvantage, or that even inflicts harm feels on some level like too great a chance to take. On the other, where do the alternatives lie? So far, one month in, I’ve no answers—but it is a question I intend to think deeply about for some time.
And, until then, I’ll look forward to the days where my conversations with all of these grownups are punctuated with conversations with the little humans whom we’re so adamant about supporting. And maybe, someday, they’ll happen in the same spaces, each offering, in turn, insights and perspectives unique to their own experiences and viewpoints. Perhaps this is dreamy, but I also like to imagine that it isn’t as far away from being a reality as it might seem.
And, to return to the wall analogy, maybe a first step isn’t to break down the walls, but to learn to communicate through them. Lean an ear against the wall, draw a sign and hold it up to the wall—We see you! We hear you! We are doing our best and we know you are too!
For whatever it’s worth, let’s be sure to keep talking.
To children, always—and, yes, even to grown ups.
Cheers,
Ron