Everyday when we return from the garden, the children are carried off the bus by Uncle Sia and led to our shop front glass doors. They love being carried off the bus like this! Perhaps it’s like flying!
Once they get to the front doors, something would begin for them, and it would go on all the way till they sat down for snack, our next scheduled activity. What this was, was the incessant instructions being meted out to them by adults around them.
- “Take off your shoes!”
- “Put the shoes here”
- “Take your bag”
- “Hold the railing”
- “Don’t play with the (safety) gate!”
- “Take out your snack box”
- “Put your bag in your cubby hole!”
- “Wash your hands”
- “Use soap”
- “Stop wasting water”
These were repeated over and over again, whether or not the words were being actually being processed or not. You can imagine the energy during this transition period- it was hurried, noisy and unenjoyable. I felt the Powerful Adult looming over the Children.
I brought this up for a team discussion.
The first idea was to draw a series of photographs to show the children the steps that would be taken from the bus up to snack time in hopes that they would be able to follow through without needing to be helicoptered by the adults. This seemed to improve the situation for a while, but it did not seem to minimise the instructions given out and after some time, the children seemed to no longer be interested to see the pictures anymore.
Next, we began to discuss the adult’s voice in this situation. We would try to be conscious about the instructions given- the way they were worded, our tone of voice and the number of times the instruction was given.
Could we shift some instructions to questions? For example:
“Shall we get our bags?”
“Ready to go for snack?”
Sometimes, instructions did not need to be given out at all…… after 3 months of school, some of the children already knew what to do, but sometimes all they needed was a little more…… TIME!
A huge A-HA moment had come for me.
In those weeks that we were being more conscious of the adult’s voice, many times the children appeared to continue not to listen. They would go off and do something else and we were not able to move along smoothly. Feelings of anxiousness began to rise in me.
Then this question came to me:
"What are we rushing for?”
Why did we need to get settled down and go for snack time efficiently?
Were we giving less importance to these periods of transition as we were to scheduled activities like atelier and play?
Weren’t these periods of time important? The children tending to their own belongings and hygiene? The children looking out for one another and working in a community?
What were we rushing for?
So this morning, we stepped back. We held space for the children. We moved along but we were not in a rush.
After coming down from the bus, the children began to take off their shoes without a word from the adults. When EK (2) forgot to place his shoes on the rack, KTE (2.5) did it for him.
QC (2.8) seemed eager to get upstairs….. He opened the door and began to go up. His energy would help the children to flow this morning.
When we were upstairs at the cubby holes, we maintained the boundary that it was not play time when some children began moving into the playspace rather than settle their belongings.
This morning we did not say much, most of the children were doing other things- looking at photographs inside cubby holes, finding some sticks left in the snack trolly etc. Then EK (2) said “box” and began to take his snack box out. At various paces the children began to take their ‘boxes’ out.
The children who seemed more eager to get to snack began to put their bags into their cubby holes. They even began to put away those that were still strewn along the corridor. These bags were not their own, but those of their friends who were currently engaged in other activities. So it was all done.
As I sat with the children at the cubby holes, I reflected how from the outside, this was just simple series of events; but upon looking more closely, we silently celebrate how the children took ownership over their transition period this morning, how they moved together, how they flowed according to their own will, including helping each other out. Albeit we had a small class this morning, and there will continue to be road bumps along the way, but this morning’s path is one that we will continue walking.
In the hustle and bustle of daily life, the rushing from one commitment to the next, how wonderful if school- a place for children, can be a place for the children to move at the right pace for them, their natural pace. To be a place where life is celebrated as a journey and not a rush to meet expectations.
