“Pushing Up” Care

“In the past few decades, early childhood teachers have felt the pressure of increased accountability, testing, academic standards and ‘push down’ curriculum,” writes Carol Garboden Murray in her opus, Illuminating Care. She continues:

I imagine the reverse—and think about what our elementary and high schools could be if early childhood teachers could push the basic principles of quality early childhood education back up. Imagine if play and care, movement, and experiential learning could spread upwards into the elementary school, middle school and creep right on up to high school too. Imagine how empathy would grow and connectivity and belonging would spread in our communities if care was a core value in elementary, middle school, high school and college.

What we know is that we are the starting point. As the first school, we have the first opportunity and responsibility to demonstrate that caring is teaching. We build the foundation for care and we have influence. We can look at care from many sides in our work as early childhood teachers—in the way our attentiveness to care shapes the child, in the way we will design curriculum and teach caring, and in our connection to families, as we design days spent with young children so that parents can go to work. Throughout my career, I can’t count the number of times moms and dads have come to me and said, “I just couldn’t have done it without you: I couldn’t have paid the rent, I could have never finished my college degree, I could have never written my book, and I couldn’t have completed this new project at work. Thank you, we could not have done it without your care!”

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