A disruption that occurred to me was whilst discussing an incident at work where a child began to be upset about something that I didnât think needed that kind of reaction.
Letâs paint a picture, all the kids are outside playing on the oval and some birds were flying around, they landed on the oval and these two Grade 1 boys went to chase them ( just as a bit of fun because⌠theyâre kids and why not), out of nowhere a Grade 3 child who is new-ish to the centre began to bawl his eyes out. I went over to see what was wrong and took some time, but I got it out of him that he was upset that the two younger boys chased birds.
My own belief then became part of the equation, which was that I didnât think that it was wrong and in fact if given the chance I would encourage the boys to chase birds as much as theyâd like which the upset child was NOT impressed with and began to conversate back and forth. After about 5 â 10 minutes of going back and forth talking about the subject at hand he then walked away, to what I thought accepting that it was fine to that find out he went to a different staff member and brought it to her attention. She agreed with my stance and basically stated that she said similar things to me.
A few days later we had a staff meeting where the âincidentâ was brought up and the Staff member and I talked about what happened and how we think about the situation, the Team Leader then backfired towards me stating that â⌠maybe the boys shouldnât be allowed to chase the birdsâŚâ I then fired back and stated that âchildren need to learn, explore and experience through play, they will not be able to do these things if we wrap them up in bubble wrap and tell them off every time, they get interested in doing something that has a slim chance of having repercussionsâ. There was a good back and forth between me and about 3 other people in the meeting about this situation. I eventually âwonâ but then they brought up the idea to mention it to the kids during the announcements we give them before they eat in the afternoon and had to push back on that idea too because then the idea to chase the wildlife will be on the fore front of the kidâs minds and theyâll go out and look to terrorise the animals instead of using it as a learning experience.
It felt weird to then push back on the idea of speaking to all the children and more keeping the whole thing âunder wrapsâ because first of all, itâs not even a big deal and was blown WAY out of proportion but two for some reason I also thought I was going back on my belief and what I âfought forâ when talking about the incident
When talking to people about this I hear from people that they are surprised that I was willing to have these conversations and basically talk back to my manager like I did but I explain to them that we have a very level workplace environment, not matter your position everyone has equal say of situations which I very helpful with growth as a team and as a Childcare Centre.
A huge thing Iâve noticed since this all went on is that I have begun to build more confidence in my position and push back and vocally question why we do certain things at the Centre, for example recently I got them to look into their internet / device policy with the older kids because I explained to them that the worries about whatever they think the kids are going to do isnât actually being prevented and that there needs to be a restructure and I donât think I wouldâve have had the courage to kick back and talk about things like that.
Resources Used whilst Writing & Recounting
Russell, S. and Carey, M., 2021. Remembering: responding to commonly asked questions. [ebook]
James Mackay - Portfolio 