Amplify! Blog

You don’t call your work ‘child care’ any more, and neither should we.  CEO Diane Lawson and our Board Directors write for Amplify! and the upcoming issue of Rattler magazine about the changes underway for Community Child Care Co-operative as it begins trading as Community Early Learning Australia.

Two weeks ago our guest writer Doreen Blyth ‘broke the internet’ with her reflection on whether Outside School Hours Care was treated as the middle child of the education and care sector.  Today she returns with another reflection, this time keeping her story’s twist to the very end.

Last week I shared with you the idea of noticing and celebrating what you already do in the name of inclusion and I asked you to make a decision just like ‘Alison’, one way or another.

As a society we want children to be divergent thinkers, but seldom do we really give them opportunity to be so. Outdoors, there is no other option. They have to push through their own barriers and experience a sense of boredom. Invent ideas and bring them to life.

I am not much of a writer,’ Rebecca Thompson tells us as she starts her inclusive practices series today, but we disagree.  In this first of three gentle provocations Rebecca captures difficult concepts with simple descriptions and asks you to consider your response to her Inclusive Practice question about Danny, Francesca and their educator Alison.

There is an old Scottish saying, ‘A story should be told eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart’ and that’s just the way my storyteller husband Ulf and I love to tell our tales to children. No books and just the children, a story, and us.  We have discovered that in this intimate space, magic happens…

This is my final blog in a series of provocations, and it would be irresponsible as the delegated provocateur not to save the most controversial for last! Today I’ll be discussing the way that language frames both perceptions and practice, and can serve to either uplift or oppress early childhood education and care (ECEC) as a sector.

Recently we have seen the development of many bush kinders, nature playgroups and adventure playgrounds and a shift to ‘seeing’ nature as a playground for children.

Have children’s interests hijacked the curriculum, and diminished other opportunities for learning and development?

It was one of those Facebook posts from a frustrated educator asking one of those questions – the kind they don’t want to ask in person but they really want to discuss. “Does it make you a better educator if you have children of your own?”