Flowers in Blue Wellie

Wow! What a week! I've done so much this week and had so many thoughts and good conversations about baby rooms and those who work in them and with them that I don't know where to begin so I won't even try to capture it all. Just a few dominant thoughts that I don't want to lose and want to bring back go consider more and with others back home.

First to organize my thinking, on Wednesday, Kathy and I visited more sites. We went to two very interesting and different types of infant care settings. One was a for-profit program (infants through preschool, which is designated a "nursery" I believe here in England) that was connected to a hospital. In fact, the women who started this are going to have several sites, a bit of a chain. But, despite being for-profit, this one had much to recommend it. The difference here is that the owners/managers were educated early childhood professionals. The woman, Penny, who ran it had strong support for her teachers going on for advanced degrees, and encouraged them. One of the infant caregivers was a member of Kathy Goouch's Baby Room Project and had been for the past few years. Babies, kids and teachers were all engaged and there was that lovely buzz of busy-ness that you like to hear when you go into a well working setting. The only things that were unique and different for me that I don't like seeing were high chairs all lined up against one wall, and interestingly, although there were cribs for 6 babies (12 I think were in the room) they were in a funky stacked array, like bunk cribs, with one on top of the other -- sort of like we did it many years ago.

Next we went to a nursery that was on the University of Kent campus and run by the student union (I believe it is, or a student organization now helps fund it). Many good things were happening there, and they had a strong philosophy and sense of the importance of engaging infants and toddlers (and preschoolers). There were some odd choices in terms of the arrangement of the center (like one very small preschool room and one enormously big; along with one small infant room and a very large toddler room) that I would have changed. They admit their biggest need on campus was for birth to three, with the longest waiting list. If I was running this place, I would have the two smaller rooms for babies (small but still nice sized) and have one of the large rooms for big two-year-olds before they transition into the one gigantic preschool room as one group. But, they didn't ask MY opinion. The one funny thing that happend here, though, was that a bunch of children were out in the play yard when we were there and it began to thunder and lightening. No one took notice! I asked if they were going to call the children in...the director said something like, "oh, they are hardy children, not afraid of a little storm." Coming from the Midwest, I found myself getting increasingly aggitated and was about to say something like, "Are you crazy?! Get those children inside now!" But, it started to rain and the teacher decided to bring them in. I processed this with Kathy later who saw how nervous I was during this episode. She'd been to the US last November to visit me and happened to be there during a particularly horrendous thunderstorm. She said that it must just be that folks here (in England) are just not aware of the dangers of lightening because it is so seldom here that they get any serious storms. Just lots and lots of rain.