Part of my decision to try to revisit this whole idea of professional social networking came at a workshop I attended today within my union, at which I realized that the entire idea of Emergent Curriculum is very difficult for many practitioners to conceptualize. I started to think about why that is... but that answer came fairly easily. It's hard to teach old dogs new tricks. It's even harder to learn something new when figureheads in positions of authority over individuals, (supervisors, program consultants, etc.), impose rigid, and for the purposes of thinking about emergent curriculum therefore restrictive, parameters around our practice.
The program I work for is based just outside of Toronto, so for all intensive purposes we follow the Toronto Operating Criteria (www.toronto.ca/children for further information on Operating Criteria in Toronto). Toronto considers itself to be a leader in quality service provision in our province for sure, and sets a leading example in a number of ways, particularly in diversity, inclusion, and service delivery that is heavily based in child development theory (via the E.L.E.C.T. - Early Learning for Every Child Today document: google it to download a copy), amongst their many other achievements which truly have set a benchmark around the province. I could drag on about this, it's a topic on it's own, but for all intensive purposes, Toronto has led the way in the field of early learning and care in many ways in Canada.
I don't dispute those claims at all, as my best experiences in the field have been within Toronto-based child care programs and post-secondary institutions (within field training programs). The expectations of staff and programs in Toronto are SO high in fact that personally, I worry about teacher burnout -- easily the leading reason why this profession experiences a loss in career retention within the first few years of front-line work.
Let's face it, there's not enough money to go around to pay our professionals adequately for even their time and responsibility while performing their duties ON shift within working hours, let alone the countless hours we spend each week immersed ourselves in the variety of other tasks that go along with being prepared to implement a changing (in the case of Emergent) curriculum from day-to-day.
Oops. Platform debates are on for the upcoming federal election.... gotta watch.
VISIT www.buildchildcare.ca TO SUPPORT A PLATFORM THAT SUPPORTS ACCESSIBLE, AFFORDABLE, UNIVERSAL CHILDCARE IN CANADA!!
More later....
