Our Philosophy ... from paper to practice

So we spent eight months writing our statement of philosophy, eight months of brainstorming, consultation, researching, writing and more consultation. We ended up with a document that we were proud of, we shared it with families and children, we shared it with colleagues. But then I thought, now what?

Coincidentally, I had just received an assessment for my Advanced Diploma on developing a Code of Conduct and I thought that this could be the answer I was looking for. That is, building a Code of Conduct around the Philosophy, articulating what we do on a day to day basis to embed it into our practice.
The first step, having a team meeting to brainstorm! Unfortunately with the end of the school year looming it was getting increasingly hard to find time for a meeting, so I needed to come up with something else.

Along with our philosophy, I sent home a simple Y-Chart with all our educators for them to reflect with.

I was very grateful for the participation of the educator team, their thoughts were insightful and on the ball.

First our Statement of Philosophy

Our service is guided by My Time, Our Place – Framework for School Age Care in Australia (The Framework) in the development of our program. The Framework acknowledges the importance of play and leisure in children’s learning, and of the relationships between children, families, schools, the greater community and educators . In line with the Framework, educators believe in the importance of collaborative relationships, and that these relationships provide caregiving, companionship, socialisation , and opportunities for learning for children and families .

We consider our service to be ‘a community of learners’ , wherein children, families, educators and other community members participate in the shared endeavour of providing a caring, engaging and stimulating environment for school age children.

We believe that children develop and learn through their participation in sociocultural activities of their communities, and by sharing the caregiving role with families, we are giving children opportunities to engage in and observe these community activities.

We do this by:

• Demonstrating respect, honesty, and independence in our interactions with children, families and community, and expecting these in return,
• Demonstrating the Organisations Values of integrity, individuality, courage and curiosity in our interactions with children, families and community,
• Providing opportunities for children to be confident, creative, active and informed members of the community ,
• Supporting and catering for the individual needs of children and families,
• Promoting strong relationships between home, school, community and the service,
• Participating in a wide range of community activities including Clean Up Australia Day, National Families Week, Harmony Day, Children’s Week and more,
• Actively encouraging families to participate in a wide range of information sharing opportunities including verbal and written feedback, and our Parent Advisory Group.

In our service, children, educators and families are active in structuring shared learning. Educators and other adults guide process and act as facilitators as they support children’s changing participation in their shared endeavours . Children will become active participants in their own learning and they will learn as they collaborate with other children and adults , and educators will assist children to make meaning of these interactions.

We do this by:

• Encouraging the children to teach us what they know,
• Giving children the opportunity to be independent and make their own choices in regards to how they spend their time whilst attending the service,
• Encouraging children to question, test ideas, take considered risks and learning that it is ok to be wrong, and to try again, and reflect,
• Embedding in our service the opportunity for children and families to participate in the development and evaluation of our program,
• Welcoming families to participate in the program, and share their skills and expertise.

This Statement of Philosophy was created after consultation with children, families, educators and selected members of the community. Consultation included workshops, brainstorm sessions, directed questioning and feedback via posters and whiteboards.

References

DEEWR (2011) My Time, Our Place – Framework for School Age Care in Australia, Commonwealth of Australia.

Rogoff, Barbara (2003) The Cultural Nature of Human Development, Oxford University Press, New York, p120.

Rogoff, Barbara; Goodman Turkanis, Carolyn; Bartlett, Leslee (eds) (2001) Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community, Oxford University Press, New York.

Rogoff, Barbara (1994) ‘Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners’, Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1:4, 209-229.

The educator's reflections

From here, we identified similarities and themes, and put together our code of conduct.

• What does our Philosophy look like in practice?
• How do we embed our philosophy into everyday practice?

Educators will:

• Engage with the children are their level. This may mean that educators will physically adjust their position to accommodate this.
• Participate in play with the children, but must be considerate of when they are asked to join or asked to leave the play.
• Make time to talk to children, and find out what they know, ask about their day/plans for the weekend with interest.
• Ensure that activities are set up in an engaging way before the children arrive at the program.
• Ask the children what they would like to contribute to the program and feed this back to the Director.
• Learn both children and families names.
• Not pressure children to participate in activities.
• Be understanding when children need alone time or support.
• Participate actively in documentation, ie/ observations, activity reflection, photo stories.
• Attend team meetings as scheduled, and participate in discussion, brainstorming and reflection

The Director will:

• Make time for all educators to be off the floor for a portion of time at the end of each shift, to allow time for documenting observations and activity evaluations.
• Collect and make available to educators resources on a variety of Community Activities, such as NAIDOC Weeks, National Families Week and Clean Up Australia. These will be made available before the event so that educators can familiarise themselves with them.
• Encourage educators to participate actively in the programming cycle.
• To provide a reflection book for all educators to contribute to. This reflection book will be used during team meetings to lead discussion.

My reflection on the process:

Challenge:

• Not everyone had seen a Y-chart before and this needed explaining when they were given it.

Benefits:

• All educators were given the opportunity to participate, which is sometimes not possible, particularly for casual educators if they cannot attend the meeting.
• Educators felt more confident in given their opinion and contribution.

Responses:

• Not all educators ‘got’ how the Y-Chart works, but with further discussion it helped.

Next time?

• YES! It was a great alternative to team meetings and can compliment them.

Colouring in, is it a valuable learning tool or just busy work?

One of the main concerns for us at our OSHC Program (both Afters and Vacation Care), is when we have new children start, particularly Kindergarten and Year 1 children, although it is definitely not limited to these younger children. These children can often be very overwhelmed in the space with so many 'big kids' and so much noise. We have very firm beliefs about the ability and right of children to choose to do what they would like to, but we found for those very new children that is very daunting. When they have been in settings that are very structured, the relaxed nature of OSHC is anything but!

We had found that the children responded to sitting down in a quiet space to draw, but again, being faced with a blank piece of paper, with choice, sometimes it got to be all too much. They are taking in everything around them and sometimes there are just too many decisions to be made. We then started chatting with the children about what they liked to do at home after school, or on weekends for those quiet times, and many of the children stated that they enjoyed colouring in. So before rushing out to buy a stack of colouring in books, I thought about what I do with my own children at home (having school aged children myself). We quite simply used to create our own colouring in books, directly related to the theme that interested the children most at the time. I would use these for birthday parties, sleepovers and just for school holidays. My own children would delight in being able to search for pictures, pick and choose what they wanted, and even include blank pages and puzzle pages in it as well.

So with this knowledge and experience in hand I went to the children in the service, now we currently do not have internet at the service so I was unable to allow they children to search for their own pictures (although this is changing in the near future!), but we were able to get the children to choose the themes that they wanted. A group of our, fulltime Year 1 boys then took it upon themselves to take a vote, and they now do this periodically when they get bored with our current books. The children would go around the service, get suggestions from others, and then take votes. I would then be handed the results so that I could go off and create the books, I would then spend some time printing them off at the office, and they would be ready to go.

The children either keep them in their 'file', like a tote tray but taking up much less room, at the service and come back to it over a number of weeks, or they would take them home. We did not require that they children do anything specific with them, it was now their book and they can do with it what they want.

We found this to be such a great way to give ownership to some of those newer, younger children. We always have a stock on hand of different themes, and we are ready to take their suggestions for what they would like. And as mentioned before the children will often come to me with their own suggestions, and then nag me until they are printed.

Whilst actually using the colouring in books so much happened within the service. Educators found that sitting with children and colouring along side them, made it easy for communication to begin. Some children were very shy and found it challenging to engage with educators and other children, but sitting next to someone, and focussing on colouring in, or word puzzles helped conversation flow as the expectations of such communication was lower. Children would laugh and talk with each other, compare and contrast their designs, their colours and their favourite pictures.

One of the books particularly allowed for secret codes to be developed and encouraged children to challenge their friends and educators to decode them! Some pictures also ended up being torn out of their books and stuck up on the walls, or we were asked to photograph a particular page, the children always keen to share. We also found that other children would lead those younger children to the activity books and tell them all about them. Show them examples, and the different themes, and also explain that we will make one just for them if they want!

The questions I then get asked are:

• How is this reflected in my planning cycle?
• How do I 'defend' my choice to have colouring-in in our program?

My Time Our Place
Principles 

Secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships - we are allowing children to make choice, we are asking for their suggestions, we are acknowledging that they just need some quiet time, to not think too hard.

Partnerships - Again we are working together, we are allowing choice and encouraging suggestions. Families do like that children have a book that is their own, that they continue to work on at OSHC, or that they can take home.

Ongoing Learning and Reflective Practice - We carefully looked at the way that we were welcoming new children in the service, and were keen to make it better for them. We looked at the environment and resources and what it may look like to a young child just entering the service for the first time, and found ways to make it better!

Practices

Holistic Approaches - Being concerned about the emotional safety of new children, wanting to make sure they feel safe, we needed to look at a wider range of ways would help children feel comfortable in a new situation. Some children seek out the structure that an activity book can provide, and this can be of great comfort as they entered our new environment.

Collaboration with children - The whole process involves talking with children, getting their ideas and following their interests. We are looking forward to having internet at the service so that the children can actually help create the books themselves.

Learning through play - When you think back to your own childhood, can you honestly say that you did not enjoy colouring in books. I myself thoroughly enjoyed colouring in on cold and rainy days. Curled up in front of the heater, or chilling out on the dining table, it really was just fun, and it was something I always just chose to do on my own!

Intentionality - Choosing to present activity books/colouring in was a very conscious decision. It is by no means the only thing that is offered at any given time, but it serves a real purpose of engage those quieter, shy children in conversation. We have also found that some of our more boisterous children, that at times need something to 'bring them back down', also take great enjoyment in these activity books. We are loathed to have time out for children that may need some time to refocus and calm down after a particularly stressful situation and find that offering them the opportunity to go and chill in the quiet room with their colouring in books or art journals is very valuable. It was not just put on the table because it was 'easy'.

Environments - We are aiming to create a welcoming environment for all of our children and families, so these quiet spaces and quiet activities serve the particular purpose of supporting the children that prefer that sort of space. Children are, of course absolutely free to move between spaces, and we find that once they have settled in, they will readily go and engage in some messy play at the clay table, play football outside, make something fizz or splutter at the science table, create a new world with the building blocks or dressing up in the 'home corner' space.

Continuity and Transitions - Activity/colouring in books can help some children make a much easier transition from the structured environment of school to the not so structured spaces in the OSHC program. It gives them that time and space to adapt to the change they have just encountered.

Evaluation for wellbeing and learning - Coming up with the idea of the activity books was always based on what was best for the children, what would help them feel most comfortable and help them settle into this very new environment. Having quiet spaces with quiet activities such as these ensured that we were meeting the needs of those children.

Outcomes

The outcomes achieved are numerous, and are obviously going to be very different for each individual child. But some of those we particularly noticed with children were:

Children have a strong sense of identity

• children feel safe, secure and supported (children were feeling less overwhelmed on entering a new busy, and boisterous environment).
• children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect (children shared ideas, chatted with each other, more experienced children took newer, younger children under their wing and showed them what's what).

Children are connected with and contribute to their world

• children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation (again children chatted with each other, shared ideas and talked about own individual work, they were actively involved in the development of activity books, and asked the opinions of others).

Children have a strong sense of wellbeing

• children become strong in their social and emotional wellbeing (children are developing confidence in this new environment, they make choices and increasingly cooperate with others, they recognise their contributions as they take on the role of organising the next themes of the the activity books).

Children are confident and involved learners

• children develop dispositions such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity (children will freely follow and extend their own interests with enthusiasm as they come up with their own theme ideas for our activity books, they will persevere with the activities within the books and demonstrate a great deal of concentration).

Children are effective communicators

•  children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes (there is always lots of chatting and communication when children are using the books, sometimes with children that they may not have spoken to otherwise).
• children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts (we often put in stories, poems, and other things into the activity books, and children will read and share these, often with laughter. The children will use other texts and story books to come up with themes that they would like to have included in the activity books - Skylanders is a particularly popular choice at the moment, with children bringing in their game books from home to show me the characters in particular they would like me to include in their activity book).

So next time, someone expresses concern over us presenting colouring-in as an appropriate activity in an OSHC program, I am very confident in saying that yes, it is a very appropriate choice and that the children gain so much out of the activity. You may notice, at no time do I talk about the actual colouring in, or reflect on their development in their physical ability to colour in within the lines, because these concepts do not come into our thinking around the presentation of this activity at all. Using colouring-in, in OSHC programs, is no way about the physical act of colouring-in, it is about everything else around it!

So, what is the moral of the story?

• Know why you have chosen a particular direction for your program.
• Know the learning framework, and be able to articulate how your chosen experience relate to the principles and practices (remember the outcomes come later!)
• Evaluate and Reflect with children, educators and families.