EARLY YEARS PILGRIMS

Ebury Hotel, Canterbury, Kent, England

So, here is the view from where I was sitting, outside in the backyard of the Ebury Hotel in Canterbury much of the first day after I arrived. I took this that afternoon, after spending "tea time" with Kathy Goouch and Sacha Powell, my colleagues from University of Christ Church Canterbury. Very nice, so restful. I left temperatures that were over 100 in Bloomington and here it is high 60s, low 70s. It is actually possible to be outside and I'm loving that. Birds are LOUD and going crazy in the trees all around. The air is so fresh.

It was so nice to catch up with Kathy and Sacha and talk about babies, babies, babies and hear all about what is happening here in England.

Today (Tuesday -- I think), Kathy picked me up after breakfast and we spent the day exploring out and about in Medvale, Kent with a woman named Tracey who is responsible for professional development, supervision, and resource provision in that area. (I can't remember her title exactly, but it reminded me of a CCRR in the U.S.) It was a wonderful day. She, and Kathy and I visited her main office located in a teacher resource/professional training faciliting, simply wonderful setting, located next to schools and programs for I/Ts & young children.

There were so many wonderful things in this professional development setting. I would love to have such a place centrally located on the IU campus as a education and resource center for pre- and in-service caregivers and teachers. It would be so cool. One of the things special about it was the atmosphere. It had a strong "Reggio" feel about it, a strong focus on the aesthetic, everything was beautiful and natural. Natural lighting, colors, materials. simply gorgeous and strong sense of order. This picture doesn't at all do what I'm describing justice, but I wanted to show a little cabin in the little garden courtyard, "the Scrap Store," that was a recycle shop for caregivers and teachers. It was, well, marvelous.

Next we went to visit a "Children's Center" which in this country are programs set up for young children and families who are poor or at risk. These centers provide wrap around services for the entire family, not just babies/children. The one we visited, for example, had a midwife, a health care professional, and people who did social services and mental health care provision, parenting classes, among other things in addition to child care. We visited the multi-age infant to 2 1/2 year old class. Excellent -- engaged in continuity of care and used "key person" approach, what we call "primary caregiving." Very mindful in approach to transitioning families into the room and then into the preschool class. The playground (or "play yard") was particularly wonderful. No plastic toys, no typical climbing equipment, but all natural material and equipment, garden plots and growing things, rocks to climb, terrain that was interesting, etc.

Then, for contrast, Tracey took us to a for-profit center. OMG. This was dreadful, yet had achieved a high quality rating from the government agency that awards such ratings. Although ratios between adults and babies/children were reasonable, group sizes were HUGE, and the environments bleak. The owner had no experience in early childhood, strictly a business man.

At lunch later, Kathy and I discussed our concerns about "warehousing" babies or as Kathy said, "parking," babies. The children in this center were merely existing -- babies were distressed and anxious, preschoolers seemed bored, aimless, and hungry for conversation, with too many bodies crammed into spaces in which, when there were toys and materials, they were inappropriate mish-mashes of brightly colored plastic bits that looked like it came from the local K-Mart, or whatever the English equivalent would be. The baby room was one huge open room, next to a smaller big room (for eating). Eighteen babies and 6 adults shared this space. Babies slept on little bean bags on the floor, although there were 2 cribs off in an isolated crib room. The caregiver who showed us around said that when babies are in there, they check on them "every 15 minutes." Preschool-age children do not nap, yet are there from as early as 7:15 in the morning until 5:30 at night. I could go on, but I won't. It would be interesting to do an ITERS and an ECERS here.

These are just a few random thoughts for now, a few worries and thoughts: I'm concerned about the sleep needs of children and what happens when we don't provide for them. After having coming to question whether group sizes really matter so much after visiting some Asian settings, after today, I'm more convinced than ever that group sizes do matter, but how/why? (Or is it a combination of size and arrangement of the envrironment + group sizes and ratios + capabilities of the caregivers/teachers? The Asian teachers were all very well educated and experienced). Notions of care versus education and their inter-relationship (both/and rather than either/or). Allowing babies/children to just "be" in such spaces while we go to work -- don't they have a right to be more than "kept" some place in a holding pattern?
Oh, the title of this blog...as Kathy and I were heading back from a wonderful lunch at a cool little farm restaurant that Tracey took us to in Medvale, we ended up on the Pilgrim's Highway to Canterbury. We decided that we were "Early Years Pilgrims."