I always ask new acquaintances to tell me their name twice. It is because I have a hard time remembering adults’ names. Kids though, I can remember. It is crucial, if you want to have a relationship with a child to remember their name. Words, and especially names have power.
Names for children and their care givers have always carried political baggage. From daycare to child care, from Head Start to pre-K, preschool to pre-k, and from caregiver to teacher. We can’t get around the fact that what you call something also describes what you believe about it.
That is why it took me a long time to decide on the name of this blog. I was certain that it needed to be right. By right I mean, it needed to push the conversation about pre-K and early learning forward. It had to have meaning and still represent what I, and my previous professional blog were about, children. I kept circling around “Early Learning” because that seems to be the way we (the early childhood profession) are moving in defining ourselves. I wanted something that would allow me to address issues beyond pre-K because, in a departure from Inside Pre-K I believe we need a comprehensive approach to early learning. Birth – 8 years old is a crucial time and is developmentally distinct from the stages of a child’s life after age 8. Children learn to read and then read to learn. That is how our schools have traditionally operated. Young children are in a process of forming, beginning, creating themselves. They are emerging from the womb, from the family, and from the home, into society. Learning from birth to 8 is an emergent time in a child’s life.
I also wanted this blog to be about more than schooling just as I believe pre-K is about more than school readiness. I wanted it to be about learning. Children, in a high quality early childhood setting are becoming learners not just students. That is why I have begun to consider children who are birth to 8, emergent learners, not “just” students, or preschoolers, or kids (one of my favorites) or children. They are becoming learners, what they will be for the rest of their life.
EmergentLearner.com also represents my own take on my process of becoming a leader in the early childhood field. I am constantly trying to learn more about the field and become a better advocate for children.
Thanks for joining this journey.
I can relate to what you say about names – I learn all my students’ names quickly but have to resort to mental contortions when I run into their parents. Fortunately, I usually can at least associate parents with their specific kids.
I love the name of this blog and what it means in how we envision this time of life. As a middle school teacher, I look forward to absorbing all I can about emergent learners, their needs, their joys.
I feel like I am, and will always be, an emergent learner. Honestly I’m thankful for that because when my curiosity has gone, I’m not sure it will be such a fun ride in my life.
Wow. Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I see this blog as looking at learning and teaching in a hopefully less predetermined fashion. It is so important that we allow children (and teachers) to become what they can and work to make that happen. When we say the purpose education is so that a child can become a good worker, aren’t we defining the end and in a sense limiting a child’s future. We aren’t encouraging them to emerge into the world as an undetermined possibility.
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