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

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.