It was the start of a school year and the new intake of Kindy students were arriving to have their pre-assessments done. Each child would arrive with their parents for a 40-minute assessment of literacy and numeracy, their first introduction to formal schooling.
When Heather*, a new Kindy student, arrived and entered the classroom and realised what was being asked of her, she screamed and started crying. She refused to sit down and kept trying to leave the room despite the pleas of her mother and staff to ‘just sit down and have a go’. Heather continued to scream for a good 15 minutes before everyone decided that it was best to abandon the assessment.
After Heather left, there was the discussion from staff projecting that Heather could experience difficulties or possibly demonstrate behavioural problems.
School started the following week and Heather continued to not play ball. She would run out of the classroom, refuse to do any work and spent a fair bit of time either crying or yelling. Heather was very sensitive and the way the school day operated was not an easy fit for her.
Within a few weeks she found her way with it and then people started to understand her more. They could then see that she was not merely the sum of the projected ‘behaviour problems’ that she had been labelled with. This arose from Heather’s own movements and her inner capacity to be able to feel the weight of systemic expectations, and yet find her way of bringing more of herself to this situation.
Heather was 5 years old and was not yet able to verbally articulate herself very well. A lot of her words were quite difficult to understand. However, her communication was very clear. Within a few weeks people started to get a sense of the beauty of Heather. Heather emanated joy. Whenever she approached something, it was with full joy. If something didn’t feel quite right for her at a particular time, she would say, ‘Heather no like’, a direct communication that something didn’t quite sit right with her. She didn’t fight or carry on; it was a simple expression that indicated how she felt about each thing.
Observing Heather’s movements with other children and adults, it was evident that she was very sensitive to how people were feeling, and extraordinarily responsive in supporting them to shake off whatever was affecting them.
One day while the class were sitting watching an educational video, most kids’ eyes were glazed over. Heather got up because she had felt there were more significant things to attend to. She went to the sink and started to wash up the cups and remaining Art equipment, completing the job by wiping down the benchtops. She then took a little plastic bag and collected rubbish from around the room, tied up the bag and placed it all in the bin outside the classroom. The teachers observed a natural authority in the way she moved and did this.
Heather didn’t always engage in the schoolwork but never switched off from what was going on for people. She was always sensing and feeling what was going on in every space that she entered.
One day a teacher had hit a point of frustration with another child and was telling the child off for their behaviour. Heather approached the teacher, touched her gently on the shoulder and said very clearly, ‘Are you okay?’. The teacher looked at Heather and said, ‘Actually, no I’m not’. Heather patted the teacher on the back while cracking up laughing and said, ‘Come on’. The teacher was disarmed by this movement and she later shared how she instantly dropped the frustration through Heather’s interaction with her. She commented that after that moment, she couldn’t be angry. She described how she’d never had another child who was so perceptive to how she was feeling and was able to communicate so clearly.
Heather was re-writing the way 5 year olds can do school. Within a few months, many of the staff referred to Heather as a natural leader and would describe how there was great joy in observing her interactions with people.
When she was in the playground, she would observe everything and would respond to what was needed. One day as the classes were coming into the lunch area, Heather noticed that another child was hurt and needed help. She stood close to the child and made sure that no-one knocked into her. She re-directed numerous classes of children to walk a different way down to the lunch area. This was all communicated from her innate authority, with the few words she expressed having maximum impact. She gave the student who was hurt the space to recover. Heather wasn’t over the top or trying to fix it or make it better. She was simply being deeply caring. Staff who observed her were blown away by how this 5 year old had the whole situation under control.
Heather never saw herself as less or as a ‘little kid’. There was an innocence and wonderment to how she approached many things, and an immense joy and embracing of life and people. She held herself as equal to everyone - child or adult. There was no arrogance in her; her movements were always purposeful and brought a sense of joy to others.
Staff would often talk about Heather and say, "I can’t believe how much love is in that body. She just oozes love; you cannot be around her and not feel love and joy". As they spoke you could feel them connecting to the same qualities within themselves. Heather would bring that to everyone; she did not see skin colour, popularity or disability; to her people were to be loved and enjoyed and she never held back her affection. Staff would check in with her teacher to see if Heather was at school that day because they just wanted to see her or connect with her for a moment, knowing that there would be joy and humour in the interaction.
Everything that Heather offers is so abundant and well beyond what the curriculum has been designed to measure. Her teacher questioned how she could ever write a report card for a child like this. Whilst she clearly had some speech issues, and didn’t always do all the class work, what Heather brought to the class each day was huge. It was well beyond current curriculum assessment parameters. The teacher saw Heather as a very aware and attentive child, who was an inspiration to other children for them to be more expressive and actively engaged in classroom life.
Children like this naturally expose the limitations of the narrow, and often restrictive, data sets by which teachers are required to ‘measure’ development, progress and achievement at school. They clearly illustrate that a one size fits all model of education does not ‘fit’ their skills, talents and ways of relating to life, if indeed, it truly ‘fits’ any child.
One size fits all may be more accurately described as one size fits nobody.
As teachers, we are well placed to discuss these matters, firstly, with each other, and then, where there is professional consensus, feeding this awareness back up through the chain of command, presenting the reality in truth of how the curriculum serves, or is doing a disservice to, our children. The foundation of our discussions could be based on questions like:
How do we expand education to allow for these natural qualities within children to be expressed, nurtured, enjoyed, celebrated and embraced?
How do we educate children in ways that support and nourish them to hold onto and expand these qualities, and equally how they can give back to, and offer to others?
Children like this bring us to a point where we make a collective professional call for an education that is truly responsive to the complete array of the qualities and skills that all of our children bring. Teachers do this but then find themselves constrained at report card time because they are then expected to fit all that is seen and nurtured into a very narrow, rigid set of criteria. In fact, even the daily curriculum demands restrict the ease with which teachers are equipped to respond in this way.
Performance measures against fixed criteria can destabilise children’s natural foundations and the qualities that they hold.
It requires a depth of professionalism for us to begin to question and to address this.
* ‘Heather’ is a semi fictitious child composed of the traits that considerable numbers of children display as they enter the schooling system at the age of 5. She is representative of all of us at this profoundly tender and responsive age.