Bill English striking a blow against children in New Zealand.

As it stands now Centres get different amounts funding from the government depending on the percentage of (ratio-ed) staff they have that are qualified and registered Early Childhood Education teachers. So if you have 80% qualified teachers you get so much funding, if you have 100% then you get more. That extra money goes to classroom materials and staff wages, as you can imagine a qualified teacher gets paid more than an unqualified one.

Now the new 2010 budget changes this by removing the 100% incentive. Therefore to get the new maximum funding (equivalent to the old 80% incentive) a centre is only required to have 80% qualified teachers. Now, just think about this for a minute. This is some scary shit. Let me break it down for you.

Early Childhood Centres are businesses just like any other. They need to watch their bottom line. They need to make a profit, some are under more pressure than others (you know the ones… the big name ones on every corner who have stockholders). In order for a centre that currently employs 100% qualified teachers to stay at the same level of profit they do now under the new budget they have two options.

One, fire 20% of their qualified staff and hire people with no experience who will work for minimum wage. This of course results in a weaker education system for your young children. With no incentive for uneducated staff to study. In fact incentive for them not to study as it might just lead to their unemployment.

Two, increase the cost of sending a child to their centre. Labour’s education spokesman, Trevor Mallard, said the $100 million shortfall in ECE funding amounted to about $25 a week per parent. That’s a lot, more than your probably going to be getting in tax cuts!

This is where it starts to get really scary. Once all the Centres go down one of these two paths that leaves parents with a choice, a choice many of them have no real say in. Send your child to an expensive Centre where the teachers are all qualified and know how to professionally deal with your child’s needs during their most important and influential learning period, 0 to 5 years old. Or send them to a cheaper Centre where 80% qualified teachers is enough and hope your kid doesn’t fall through the cracks somewhere along the line.

Of course parents and whānau that live in lower socio-economic areas aren’t really going to have a choice are they? Which leads to yet another way to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots. That’s right National, make sure that even if your under 5 years old, if you don’t have the money you don’t deserve the same level of education as people who do.

Scared yet? I am.

Guns in Early Childhood Education

This in my mind is stupid.

First of all, trust me when I say that I’m no gun activist. In fact, I’m completely against guns being used against human beings. But that being said I sure as hell played with water pistols when I was a child and I even had a BB Gun when I was in high school. I have fond memories of my friends all going down to the local primary school with our BB Guns and glasses and having wars late into the night. I still enjoy the odd paintball game now a days. This didn’t make me into a crazed killer. This was just a part of my boyhood.

Second, aren’t we meant to be working with the children’s interests? The kids at my centre are very interested in guns. Wouldn’t it be awesome to do a project on guns. Learn about the different types of guns. Learn what guns are used for? Learn about how to safely use guns. Learn about gun licenses? Make some gun licenses? Teach them what to do if they ever find a real gun? To me this sounds like a great idea, but I’ve had some pretty horrible “great” ideas in my life time. But then again what’s the alternative? Make guns, which are seen by kids everyday in their cartoons and stories, a taboo subject. Just pretend they don’t exist?

What’s your thoughts on toy guns at centres? Would you allow them at your child’s centre? If so, why and what rules would you expect to come with them? Would you forbid them? If so, why and how would you stop a child from pretending a stick is a gun?

Does this image disturb you? Why?

You’re right, in this day and age it is a non-issue, but you asking is making it an issue, isn’t it? For me personally, I have no problem doing nappies and believe that it comes with the job. I would be happy if I was just expected to do it and no one batted an eye or suggested otherwise. I mean, it seems to me that the only way it’s going to really become a non-issue is if that’s how we treat it.

But instead, I feel pressured into giving the centre permission to ask the parents if it’s alright with them if all staff (including the new guy we just hired) changes nappies, soiled clothes etc. It seems like the easy way out. The company gets to cover itself.

I wonder if there will ever be a time when I start at a new centre and this isn’t brought up. Or a time when if a parent does have a problem with me changing their child’s nappies, management will tell them that I’m an employee like any other and to get over it rather than awkwardly asking me to not to change little Susie’s nappies anymore.

Pipis Preschool

As some of you will know I really want to open my own preschool one day. In order to do that I need to learn how to run one. That’s one of the opportunities my new job is offering me. Plus my new centre is a smaller with only 25 children a day instead of up to 75 at Lollipops. I like the smaller more homely feel. At times Lollipops seemed way to much like a business. Don’t get me wrong a preschool is a business and needs to be run like one if you want to keep it open, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to feel or even look like it to the teachers, parents and children.

Today, I started my new job at Pipi’s Preschool. I actually worked at Pipi’s for 3 weeks earlier in the year while doing a teaching practice for University. I enjoyed it so much I decided to move. That being said Pipi’s also needs a lot of work. The staff are great but things aren’t running the best in my eyes.

Of course, things can change and my views of what is optimal will change as well. I’m just looking forward to learning a lot and pushing myself into more of a leadership role at my new centre.

Listen to me!

Too often adults get frustrated when they ask a child ‘Can you put away your toys please?’ and the child answers ‘No’. Then the child gets frustrated when they get in trouble for not listening. They did listen and they answered the question, you just didn’t like the answer.

Adults seemed to forget the difference between a question/request and an order/command. If the child doesn’t have a choice then don’t offer them one.

Using the above example, it would be much better to say ‘Jimmy, it’s time to put your toys away now, thank you.’ Notice how it is directed at the child (using their name), firm and to the point yet still polite. Make sure to use thank you instead of please at the end. Please infers a request, while thank you gives praise for an action that is going to be done.

If you’re still having trouble with the child, try giving extra praise right after the order. For example ‘Sara, it’s time to go to bed now thank you. You’ve been such a good listener today I’m so proud of you. I think you deserve a special story tonight!’ The more praise you give them before they follow out the order the more pressure they feel to complete that order to deserve the praise they have been given.

Which bits are the important ones?

Today, I was thinking more about why we are so afraid of making mistakes or being seen doing the wrong thing? Society today puts far too much importance on being right, on not making mistakes. A mistake can cost you a job. A mistake can lead to disgrace or humility. A mistake can imply you are stupid!

But in reality how does one be an innovator or learn by ones self without making mistakes? Far too often I have children come up to me in class and ask me to do something for them. Can you draw me a picture of a cat? Can you build me a tower out of blocks? This scares the shit out of me! Why? Because our teaching is killing their creativity! They have already learnt that mistakes are bad and that things that look different are bad within our society. They want their picture of a cat to look like what society tells them it should look like. They’ve already decided what they aren’t. They’ve already decided what they can’t do. Or is it us as teachers and us as a society who has decided that for them?

This is exactly the opposite of what we as teachers should be striving for. I want my kids (the ones in my class) to have the whole world open in front of them. For them to have the confidence to do want ever they want to. To be true to their dreams and believe that they can accomplish anything.

Happily it seems I’m not the only one that believes this. Below is an amazing talk I stumbled across while surfing today that covers exactly how I have been feeling. It’s about 18 minutes long and well worth a watch for all parents, educators and students.

Propaganda Machine

He did a great job of entertaining the kids and even talked to them about what they liked to eat. He said he liked apples? Make no mistakes, all these kids knew that this was the clown from McDonalds. While it sounds like he is promoting healthy eating by saying he likes apples, all he really doing is pumping the kids and parents full of propaganda that McDiddy’s is a healthy fun and family oriented restaurant. In reality no one should be eating at McD’s let alone any child! Do yourself and your children a favour and stay away from the golden arches and all their fast food friends.

Kapa Haka

I also wrote a small book in Te Reo Māori called The Sandpit, which I have been reading with the children. I’ve uploaded a copy here for your viewing pleasure. Keep in mind in my hard copy version the shovel at the start of the book can come out and be used to lift little flaps that cover the objects in the sandpit. You get the idea.

Coolest Toy Ever!

To switch things up a bit, over the last couple of weeks we have been asking families to donate their unwanted household goods to us, so that we could in turn auction them off on New Zealand’s favourite auction website Trademe. We managed to collect quite a few objects and organised them into 40 auctions. All auctions started off as $1 reserve, so some of them have been getting a fair bit of attention. The ride on train set you see in the picture is upto $70 at the moment with 24 watchers.

The current auctions end on Friday the 24th of July, so if you are keen for a bargain or just want to support my pre-school click here and check out the auctions for yourself. Don’t forget to bid generously.

UPDATE – Our first load of auctions ended tonight. We managed to get $660 minus about $50 in Trademe fees. That’s better than we were expecting and will go along why towards transforming our outdoor areas.

Piggy Piggy

I decided to join in with the fun, so I got dress up as well. I dressed up as a pig. I used my brother’s pink Puma track suit, Shen you’ll have to enlighten us all on how you became in possession of a pink Puma Track Suit. I also cut up an old egg carton for the nose and a box for the ears. Ivy made me an adorable little piggy tail out of some old fabric she had lying around.

We’ve got some more cool days coming up like, Bike Day, Disco Day and PJ and DVD Day. Should be a fun 2 weeks.