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It’s time to change the label.
Few things in the world get myself and my team of teaching professionals riled up as much as the word “daycare”. A small twitch in the eye appears every time I hear this word in movies, tv, and amongst a society beginning to appreciate the level of education that occurs in the first 5 years. It’s not that care isn’t an important factor in working with children, it’s that these phrases come from a time when there was little more to the job, and in the modern context they overlook the importance of and effort which teachers and teaching assistants go to get qualified to work with young children. I get why it exists – not everyone does what we do at Scola and not everyone values education at this age level in the same way that we do. There are still too many young, unqualified and inexperienced people running rooms full of way too many children. The truth of the matter is that isn’t education – but it’s also not what We at Scola do.
An array of teachers and teaching assistants deserve to be called teachers and teaching assistants because that’s what they worked so hard to become. Not only this, but when you think of your child as the capable adult-like person that they are, these words “daycare, child care, child minder and care taker” demean their experience. “Scola School” you’ll hear most of our children calling it these days, a simple change in terminology that promotes a sense of pride in where they are and what they’re doing.
“Raffy goes to her school and I go to Scola School.”
The declaration of one young Scola boy who thrives knowing the day coming will be filled with valuable lessons and knowledge as he builds the foundations for his future learning career. I could bang on here with charts and graphs about the importance of exposure to valuable resources and high quality teachers, but the most important part about school is that it is enjoyable. It’s far too common an issue these days that children don’t enjoy their school experience and find themselves exhausted, frustrated and stressed by the experience. What harm then is there in declaring the first stage of school the “preschool” period and hitting the ground running on an education front. It is, after all, their first years of learning. Leaning into the “school” in preschool means that you set the foundations for an enjoyable education experience and bring attention to the learning that occurs outside of a book. What good is it, I would ask, for a child to count to 100 if they don’t know how to make friends, or find calmness in a chaotic situation. All of these are the important learning experiences that you don’t find sitting at a desk and are becoming fundamental problems in society that are preventable from an early age in many examples. Again, I could go on about the graphs and charts related to increasing feelings of discomfort and mental health issues in young people, but the point is that you don’t learn that level of resilience from reading PsychDaily, nor when you’re simply cared for; it’s taught and it takes experienced and qualified teachers to teach these skills.
The focus on teaching brings me to my next point – there’s a valuable feeling of respect that teachers in the preschool environment feel being referred to as teachers in a school. If it’s a school like Scola, many of the teachers will tell you it’s the best school they’ve taught in – and they’ve taught in many. The words daycare and childcare are polarising for early childhood teaching professionals because they worked hard for their qualifications – especially the teachers here who you’ll find have a specific appreciation for early childhood to tag along to their Bachelor and Masters Degrees. They also have a heightened awareness of the brain development that occurs in the critical period and the executive functioning that needs guiding at this time. In a world so rapidly changing, the value is having a child that is social, capable and emotionally self-sustainable so that they can see to the world’s new challenges and persevere. These skills, we know, are gathered in the formative years and solidified through life’s experiences. Without strong and attentive teachers, the opportunities go by without a learning experience taken away.
We’ve worked hard to cultivate a culture of respect for the education that goes on at this age which means fear not, parents aren’t the only people subject to my rants! At our monthly meetings, our teachers will tell you the constant barrage of supportive reinforcement that they get from me in the form of “You’re teachers! Tell people to call you a teacher!”, and “Age is no barrier to learning,” and a few other more expletive words on the topic. Passionate is the way I put it, but the point remains that I have a huge belief in the high standard of professionalism and education that the Scola team have (both degree and non-degree qualified), and to be simply called a caretaker is a disservice to them. Like we always say the best thing to call your child’s teacher is a teacher, and the best thing to call Scola is school. You don’t call your tax accountant a “loophole finder”, you call them a legend. Why should teachers be any different? There’s a few terms that go a long way in creating an appreciation for teaching professionals:
Our teachers are exactly that – Olivia, Georgia and Nichola all worked for years to get their bachelor and master’s degrees in teaching. That’s what makes our school a school and not a daycare, the fact that for every 10 children there’s a teacher and one or two teaching assistants every day. These teachers like to be called teachers, and they like their school referred to as a school – it gives them an immense sense of pride to teach in a non-traditional school environment that values the education at this level. They work in learning environments, not play spaces and these teachers run an educational programme, not a daily routine.
In a world fraught with a shortage of teachers that feel overwhelmed and unsupported, a little recognition through the way we talk about these professionals and our organisation goes a very long way.