Blog Archives - Carol Garboden Murray, M.Ed.

Via Negativa: Seeking a creative enlivened teaching life

5/26/2021

I first heard the phrase Via Negativa from the poet David Whyte As he would describe it, Via Negativa is what we must say NO to in life to find the next step that serves our deeper unfolding.

Years ago I was attending a workshop by Gretchen Kinnel (author of Good Going) and she said that humans learn the most from non-examples. This statement piqued my attention and got me thinking. The next day I was interviewing a new teacher for a position in our child care program and as I told her about our philosophy, how we build strong relationships, and value play, she quietly nodded and smiled. But, It wasn't until I gave non-examples and I said, "We don't do worksheets, calendar time or the weather chart," that I saw her eyes widened and she began to ask meaningful questions that led us into a deep conversation about early childhood education.

"Via negativa" is a way of understanding that when we don't know exactly what we want or need, we can usually identify what we don't want.

Sometimes we take the next step in our life by moving away from what we know for sure we must stand against.

Maybe we hold a memory within us of a horrible teacher we had as a child, or a hurtful experience we had in school, and that guides us by the power of "via negative" to create something very different for the children in our charges.

Living a creative life with children requires us to walk in the dark. We have to be brave to take the next step not really knowing where it will lead. When we care for and teach young children, we don't follow a guide book or a how-to-manual. We follow relationship planning rather than lesson planning (Ron Lally). We are making decisions moment by moment and day by day and we live in a state of openness - expecting the challenge, the delight, the surprise, and the unknown to guide us.

The compass we use to navigate a teaching life is made of many things - we have our knowledge of child development to guide us, we have our respect for the culture of childhood to point us in the right direction, and sometimes we lean on "via negativa" too. For example when we are challenged and puzzled by a child's behavior and grappling with the next step, we don't know exactly what to do, but we do know for sure that we must avoid shame and we must step away from the power struggle at all costs (via negativa).

Maybe you feel stuck in your teaching practice and you are not quite sure how to make a more enlivened habitat for children and for yourself. The first step in changing your course might be in stepping away from what feels flat or uninspired. Creativity and engaged learning comes from having an original new direction. You can start working on moving towards that unchartered territory by leaving behind what you believe isn't serving children's best interest anymore.

A few years ago at my school we asked ourselves what purpose "circle time" served. If we really believe young children learn through choices, social interaction, movement and play, what do they get from circle time? I started studying children's faces and body posture and taking an observational measurement of their engagement during circle time. When the teachers read informational instructional books or tried to do whole group lessons or a big language chart experience, I generally saw kids writhing, or looking out the window, or poking their peers, or picking their noses. This was quite a contrast to what I saw when teachers told good stories or let the children be the story tellers. What I saw during storytelling and song was pure joy, intense listening, and fully body participation.

What we decided to do was to step away from viewing circle time as "instruction time" and to re-name it "our gathering". Via Negativa was our guide because first we saw what wasn't working and we stepped away from it.

This also dramatically changed the teaching experience. We subtracted what wasn't working and we named story and song as our primary goal for gathering. Instead of being worried about group management, teachers were free to focus on becoming excellent story tellers, reflecting upon how to guide children into their own storytelling, and working together to curate a beautiful diverse collection of songs for our gathering sing-alongs.

If you've ever had the delight of telling a story you love to tell and seeing 16 children gazing at you with care and hanging on your every word - you can imagine the difference the teachers felt by claiming their identity as expert story tellers, rather than circle time managers.

Sometimes we find our NO before we find our YES. Via negativa can keep us out of the gutter, keep us from repeating negative patterns, and push us towards new frontiers in teaching and caring.

Calendar-time represents the early childhood teachers' collective identity crisis

5/15/2021

Early childhood teachers are suffering from a collective identity crisis. For years, we've been standing in defense, trying to justify our profession by borrowing language and imagery that is not our own. We've been trying to align with K-12 teachers, and while doing so, we have reached outside of our field to use someone else's language, imagery, and practice in attempt to show that we are "real" teachers.

Although we know that the child learns the most meaningful and critical lessons through play and care - we have believed that we must look like "school" and we must describe learning in academic categories and standards to be included in the educational discourse. Because we live in a society that doesn't really respect the culture of childhood, we have had to borrow language and imagery that doesn't match childhood, and doesn't align with the unique foundational work we do. We've borrowed charts and calendars to try to climb up that false hierarchy that says the older the person you teach, the more important your work becomes, as if teaching college is the imagined pinnacle of respect, so teaching babies, toddlers and young children must be at the bottom.

Calendar time is one of those images that early childhood teachers have adopted from school culture. It originally came from a K-2 curriculum of the 1970s called, "Math-Their-Way". The developmentalist, Mary Barrata Lorton, who wrote Math Their Way, would be horrified to see the way calendars are being used in preschool today as a symbol of education. Within her math approach, the calendar ritual with it's numbers and alternating patterns, wasn't even introduced until the middle of kindergarten or first grade. Mary's focus for Math instruction was about teaching with manipulatives and loose parts to discourage elementary teachers from using worksheets or introducing symbols too early. The way she introduced the calendar as a real life graphic tool was just one small part of the Math Their Way Curriculum, and was never about memorizing days of the week, or quizzing kids on temporal concepts like yesterday, today or tomorrow.

I am not going to write about all the reasons the calendar, that has become a quintessential image in so many early childhood classrooms, is a miss-leading visual that has no pedagogical foundation for our three, four and five year olds. I don't want to talk here about how the calendar time routine steals children's time and disregards the way young children learn sequencing, numbers, patterning, symbols, counting, or literacy. If you are ready to throw out the calendar and liberate yourself, your program, and your children - you will find all the rationale you need to do so on your own by turning to the many play based child advocates who have been speaking out against it for years.

It is one thing to complain that no one understands early childhood teachers or respects our youngest citizens - and it is quite another thing to contribute to the misunderstanding and disregard by participating in the collective false identity. We can no longer hide behind the abc charts and the days of the week graphs. It is time to be the bold early childhood professionals that children need and deserve.

In the past, seeing the big pocket calendar in the early childhood classroom may have sent a message to someone that this is a place of "learning". In the emerging future, seeing the big calendar in the early childhood classroom sends a message that the teachers do not have a strong identity as early childhood practitioners. I don't want to be harsh or critical of any individual who has been teaching young children in a world that is out of balance -and in a society of ridiculously inadequate support. I just want you to know that the things that you hold closest to your heart - the way you care for children at arrival, and the way you sit with them during meal times, the way you care about the child's play and inquiry - every interaction you have with the child is powerful. Your care is the treasure trove of teaching and learning. I want to shine a light on your care and hold it up as a model of education. I want to free you from needing to prove that you are a teacher with images that do not reach the child who sits on your lap. I want to rescue us all and facilitate a collective recovery from the identity crisis that has plagued our profession. I want to reach back into the nucleus of care and invent a new language to describe the pedagogy of care to articulate what quality teaching and learning looks like when it emerges from a relationship of trust that respects the culture of childhood.

Throwing out the calendar is a perfect way to begin to claim your identity as a first teacher who works with new humans who learn and grow in relationship, through play, care, movement, experimentation and mess making. We can be proud of our honorable work as caregivers, play facilitators, companions, story tellers, social coaches and family partners in child growth.

We don't need to contrive education by sitting in front of a calendar when we have the privilege of introducing children to the awe of nature, clay, paint, blocks, sand, water and mud. It would be absurd to recite the days of the week and months of the year when we can teach the joy of song, rhythm, poetry, story and the marvel of their own fantasy, the wonder of friendship, and the beauty of relationship.

Care is education. Play is education. No one will ever respect us or understand us unless we proudly name and show who we are. We will never be free from the collective identity crisis until we stop borrowing and adopting practices, language, and images that are not our own and that do not rise to meet the brilliance of the young children we hold in our arms.

Together, let's rescue care and care will rescue us. Care is our strength. We can start the care revolution from the inside out. We can do this.

But, I know you can DO IT BY YOURSELF: Care & Power Struggles

5/9/2021

I recently witnessed a new teacher struggling with a child over putting on his shoes. The conversation went something like this:
Child: Help me put my shoe on.
Teacher: I know you can do it yourself.
Child: But I want you to help me.
Teacher: I’ve seen you do it before and I know you are very capable.
Child: (falling to the floor in tears) I can’t do it!

After a few minutes of crying and sprawling in the middle of the cubby room another teacher stepped and said, “What’s happening here?” and the new teacher explained, the child is crying because he wants me to put his shoes on for him even though I know he can do it himself. The second teacher knelt down and said to the new teacher and the child, “Would it be okay if I helped?” and the child nodded. She said, “Let’s see, you look pretty sad, I wonder what we should do first? How about if I put on one shoe, and you do the other one?” The child nodded again, and she proceeded to gently put his shoe on while handing him the other one. He quickly wiped his eyes, jumped up and finished the job and got his coat on, too.

In a follow up conversation with the teachers, we talked about care rituals at cubby time. The new teacher expressed her frustration, saying that she really believed that if the second teacher would have just let the boy cry it out, he would have eventually gotten his shoes on. I agreed with her that this child is very capable, and I asked her to talk a bit more about her goals and hopes for children around self-help skills. She told us that she believes that children are capable and that if we do everything for them, we will be taking away their chance for independence. The second teacher and I supported her beliefs and agreed with her, that independence is an important program goal. We also explained how crucial it is to support one another as team members, and sometimes a team member can step in when there seems to be a power struggle brewing—we didn’t intend for this to be an instance of one teacher undermining another, but rather a way for a team to be supportive and a more experienced teacher to offer a model for scaffolding.

This conversation opened up many good points about care and independence. The three of us talked about why children who are very capable might still want us to care for them, and how we can support them by being a partner—sometimes when a child does not want to do it him self, even just sitting down next to him and walking him through the steps is a way to be supportive. In this instance, offering to do the first step bolstered him to do the rest all by himself, like we knew he could. This would have been different if the second teacher would have scooped him up and held him in her arms like a baby and put his shoes on for him. That would have been over-care. That would have reinforced his sadness and enabled him. But, she didn’t shield him from his own frustration—she acknowledged his feelings and looked for a way to pull him out of the hole he was digging for himself.

I have seen many teachers who are insistent upon teaching independence fall into power struggles with children over dressing or hand washing or toileting. What I have witnessed is that power struggles of withholding care often lead to a feeling of abandonment, and can be examples of under-care. We have found that the struggles are easily avoided if the teachers slow down during care rituals, and often just being present and acknowledging the challenges alongside children, while children are caring for themselves, is enough to support them in all the steps.

When a child says, “I can’t do it” and we say, “Oh yes you can!” we are offering an opposing view and immediately inviting a challenge. When a child says, “I can’t do it” and we say, “Hmm.. I wonder what you mean?” or “It looks like you are frustrated”, or "Sounds like you'd really like my help today" we show that we respect care as not only a physical task, but also an emotional meeting of two people. Care is an invitation.

For the most part, children are fiercely independent, and we see their natural urges to “do it by myself.” We see their capacity and capabilities clearly, so why is it that they sometimes revert to needing or wanting our help, during caring rituals? Although we can only speculate, I believe there are many emotional explanations: It feels good to have someone else care for you, putting on your own shoes is a lot of work, and more work for some children with organizational challenges, children miss home, care rituals remind them of mom and dad, children feel ambivalent about growing up, but can’t express these subconscious fears except through behavior and children are seeking connection with the people around them.

Again, I want to make clear that partnering with children to avoid under-care is very different than an approach that coddles children and robs them of their opportunity to feel pride in autonomy and accomplishment. We can see each child as capable and also remember that they have been on this planet for three or four years—and we can be sure that helping them put on their coat or shoes will not prevent them from becoming adults who can do this on their own.

In this instance, I ask us all to take a few moments to reflect upon our own care needs as adults. Think about how good you feel when a friend makes you a salad or a bowl of soup. Doesn’t it just taste better when you didn’t have to make it yourself and someone else served it to you? Imagine standing in the sun on a humid day and having a friend or partner offer you an ice cold drink—what a caring gesture and how much more refreshing the drink is, knowing it came from someone who is noticing your needs and caring for your well-being. We all appreciate this kind of care, no matter how old we are.

A few nights ago, I stayed up late writing in my pajamas at the dining room table. When I finally got into bed I didn’t realize how cold my feet had gotten and I started to complain about my toes being ice cubes. My husband got up and found some of his own wool socks and put them on me. As he tugged the socks up over my ankles, I felt like a kid and I thought, “When is the last time someone has put my socks on for me?” It made me reflect upon care and comfort and independence. How often do I let others care for me? With this reflection my awareness for care was heightened. I started noticing care everywhere—when I went out to eat at a restaurant I noticed the gentle gracious way the waitress placed my plate in front of me; when I got my groceries, I noticed the way the bagger helped me load my cart; when I rushed into the bank on a rainy afternoon, I noticed the woman who held the door for me. Care is all around us, and opening our eyes to it allows us to receive. Care is reciprocal and we are always connected to one another, and need one another, even when we can "do it by ourselves". Moving through the world with this simple awareness is a form of self-care.

Carol Garboden Murray
Illuminating Care: The Pedagogy & Practice of Care