writing | Right from the Start

I have finally managed to watch Michael Morpurgo’s Richard Dimbleby Lecture. How refreshing to hear someone from outside of the world of Education recognising how undervalued the Early Years profession is. The lack of financial reward and status means that many of the UK’s brightest individuals are discouraged from entering the Early Years profession. Working with our youngest children is one of the most important occupations of all, as Morpurgo put it

‘a pound spent in the early years can save ten pounds later’

Thank goodness some of us care enough not to desert the profession.

The lecture also decried the target driven education system we have in this country. When everything relies upon targets and league tables it is easy to forget about the individuality of each child and how their needs can be met. Morpurgo explained how in New Zealand children enter school on their 5th birthday, thus allowing teachers time to get to know each child individually , rather than having a class of 30 all arriving at once. Also in Finland, which comes 2nd in the OECD World Education rankings, children do not start school until they are 7 years old. With an education system built on targets and children starting school at such a young age we are setting our children up for failure. No wonder we keep seeing headlines about how boys are failing to read.

Morpurgo argues that the most important part of a child’s education is building trusting relationships, focusing on the unique qualities of each child. When teachers and adults are passionate about a subject, be it reading, music, sport or science they enthuse children to enjoy those things too. This reminded me of Sir Ken Robinson’s book ‘The Element’. In this he talks about how each of us have something that we excel at , that we enjoy and is at the core of our very being. Many of these things are discovered by perceptive and enthusiastic adults when we are children, others of us do not find our ‘element ‘ till much later in life, if at all.

There are a number of people who helped me to find a passion. My mother read me books, took me to the library and showed me that books were special, instilling in me a love for reading. The primary school teachers who first put me on the stage in school shows and sowed the seeds for a love of performing and my secondary school English teacher who recognised my talent for writing and called me her ‘shining star’ helped me to believe that I could.

It also made me think of another thought I had earlier in the day as I taught my eldest daughter to play clock patience. I thought about all the things my grandfather taught me to do when I was young. Not only clock patience, but how to make a paper hat and paper aeroplane, how to play pick up sticks and two little dickie birds with pieces of paper on your fingers – things that I hope I remember well enough to pass down.

Working in Early Years Education I am sure that we touch children’s lives in many ways, with the experiences we give them, through listening to them and sharing their worlds and understanding their needs. In some ways it’s a bit sad that few of the children we teach will remember the influence we had on their lives, they wont cite us as someone who touched their life, but I’m pretty certain we did.

For a full transcript of the Dimbleby Lecture http://www.michaelmorpurgo.com/news/read-michaels-dimbleby-lectur/

This week is National Storytelling Week. I was going to write about my experiences of story telling with young children. However,something else that I have been talking about this week seems to relate very well to story telling.

I have been having a sort out of the endless ‘stuff’ we accumulate in our house. One part of that has been to thin out all the things we have stored that we never use and collate our photographs in one place. During this process my husband found a box full of old letters, certificates and notebooks which contain memories that would otherwise be forgotten. We looked at photos of years gone by and the way that we remember things. I also had a conversation relating to memory with a neighbour who recently had a large family gathering. She talked about how when they all got together and talked about past shared events, they each remembered it differently.

How much of our lives get lost because we don’t document it? When we need to find evidence of how we felt, often we can only say, I don’t remember it like that but maybe that is how it was. Sometimes I wish I had documented my life so that I could look back and say with confidence , that is what happened, this is how it happened and this is how I felt.

At times I have kept diaries, mostly during my teenage years. I was so embarrassed by my thoughts when I came across them years later, that I threw them away but a part of me wishes I hadn’t. I have kept diaries of my pregnancies and early days of the children because the children won’t remember those times. I hope that one day I will be here to answer their questions about it but maybe, like my own mother, I will be gone by the time those questions arise. I kept a journal during my honeymoon, I don’t often read it but sometimes it’s comforting to look back on the best times in your life.

My point is that when we think of story telling we automatically think of fiction, but our lives are a story – often the most interesting stories come from real events. What may seem irrelevant or waffly thoughts right now will someday mean something to our children and grandchildren. My most treasured possession is a letter that my mother wrote when she was in hospital after having me. My dad found it after she had died and it is my only account of how she felt to be a mother for the first time . Stories don’t have to be about dragons and adventures, let’s not forget that our own stories matter too. For National Storytelling week I will not tell a story but will try to begin to tell my story so that I don’t forget and will not be forgotten.

Play, Early Education and more…