Are You Real?

“As an adult in the classroom, I have many roles to fill. I want to be positive, supportive, enthusiastic, curious, patient, interested, calm, fair, experimental, humorous, and sometimes even a bit poetic,” wrote Carol Hillman in the book, Teaching Four-Year-Olds. “I want to be all these things and be good at each of them.

But as I think about all these positive qualities, I have come to believe that the most important quality of all is being authentic. More than anything else, I want to be believable. I want to be real. I want to be an adult in whom children have trust.

Trust comes through a building process…It is being consistent in my thoughts and actions so the children know what to expect…It is treating each child as though he or she counts.”

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