Flexible transitions as unique processes

Early childhood educator Gail Megaffin explains Crawshaw Kindergarten’s belonging through transition project. Gail tells of the different types of support the kindergarten kaiako offer to tamariki and whānau as children transition from the centre to school.

Transcript

Gail Megaffin

Our inspiration was all about transition being not an occasion but a process – a very valuable process – and then a human state of being that needs nurturing and supporting. And that it is – that every child is different, every child comes from a different place, and therefore lots of different approaches needed to be trialled and used to support this.

It’s really crucial to understand that children arrive with their prior knowledge, their ways of knowing, their ways of being, their ways of doing, the bicultural components. And I think, as educators, it’s our role and our privilege to pick up on that and guide them forward to where they can best take that.

There’s a meaningful quote that sits at the very front of Te Whāriki: “Children need to be nurtured like a precious seed to ensure their survival and inculcated with an understanding of their own importance.” That guided what we were doing.

Our mahi was about identifying the need of each child and the family and how we as teachers collaboratively could support them through the process – both hands on and by providing encouragement and guidance and stepping back.

So the focus on flexible transition to school, based on a child’s individual culture and being, we got to a point where the child finished kindergarten, in the last few weeks had a series of visits to school that were kind of separate from kindergarten life and then they started school, and then they were a school child and that was it.

And in our case, a number of our families, for various reasons, didn’t take the children to school visits. They assumed that their child would just settle in well because the school was right next door. Maybe they had older siblings there. Some of them didn’t have the time, but some of them, I know, were just hesitant to put themselves in that position – maybe because of their own relationship with school back when they were young or whatever the case, so that wasn’t always happening.

So we talked about various ways that we could support this and decided that we would offer with every family to go with them at least on the first visit, to have a teacher sitting alongside them, a trusted friend, which we’d become over the years, so they weren’t doing it alone. And so for each child, we worked out a process with the family, with the school about how many visits we’d attempt. We had an open-ended date to when they could start, so that they didn’t have to go when they turned 5. If they were ready to go before 5, that was great – they could then do a few visits on their own without any adult and then they could start school happily. If they weren’t ready, we’d extend it beyond 5 and we’d keep them on the kindergarten roll rather than the school roll and take them for visits. The school was very forthcoming with ideas as well, which was great, and so it was a real partnership. And some children even would have friends come over from school to play and then take them back to school.

It’s about everyone bringing something to the table, the children, their whānau, the community. My advice if you want to do something like this is just start. Think about what you can do, make a start and see what happens. Modify as you go.

Acknowledgements We acknowledge Crawshaw Kindergarten and educator Gail Megaffin.

Supported by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative Fund from government funding, managed by the New Zealand Council for Education Research.