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Teach Wonder
Teach Wonder
Agency: Attunement and Wellbeing
Today we are talking Agency with our friend Lara! We talk getting outside, the best ways we can show up for children, and how we teach students to learn about their own needs.
About Laura
Lara Lloyd The Forest School Lady and Owner of Park Hall Forest School
After living in Finland, Lara was a traditional Primary School teacher in strict Private schools who was always trying to find an excuse to flee the classroom and get outside. She now runs a year-round, fully outdoor early years setting where the emphasis is on guiding children to look after their needs, their friends and their environment and be the best humans they can be. Lara has a masters in family psychology and so also tries to integrate the whole family into the Forest School way of living. Lara offers training including an agency audit and online mentoring chats to troubleshoot issues in your setting on your path to independence and agency.
You can find Lara and her school at @theForestschoollady and @parkhallforestschool
Intro Music: David Biedenbender
Other Music: Noru Pixabay
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We don't know whether, if it's what connections and links a child is making in their brain about dandelions, just while we happen to be talking about magpies, you know, just let them get on with it, because that's what's important to them right now, and that's what's going to stick with
Introduction:So now we'rerecording the so welcometo Teach Wonder. Yes, welcome to Teach Wonder, a podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neill and Julie Cunningham.
Ashley O'Neil:Today is the day. This conversation is one that I've been thinking about for weeks, and I'm so excited to finally share. Our guest is Laura Floyd. When we were in Iceland, we met a ton of lovely practitioners, and Laura is one of them. We bonded over the last bite of gluten free cake walks through town and pedagogical debriefs, joy and cleverness radiate off of her, and that energy comes across in this conversation. We typically edit our interview interviews just a bit for length and clarity, but we did not want you to miss a moment with Laura, so this episode runs a little longer than our usual. It's worth the Listen, though, Lara has this way of saying things that just stick with you. I've been thinking about this conversation since we had a few weeks ago, and many of the ideas that Julie and I brought back with us came from the external processing we did with Laura and the rest of our group. Laura will tell you a bit more about herself, but we've also linked her for school profiles in our show notes. In this episode, you'll hear Laura's philosophies about children, agency and nature, and she draws on her experience in a way that brings new and unique perspectives to topics we've been covering this season. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Laura as much as we enjoyed talking with her.
Lara Lloyd:Okay,
Julie Cunningham:it's so good to see you and to hear your voice. Um,but, can you - not But. And Lara, can you tell us your setting is really unique for us and for our listeners? I think we don't haveanything quite like what you have and quite like how you work with children that we would be familiar with here. So can you explain what yourwhat your setting is like for us?
Lara Lloyd:Absolutely okay. Sowe run a program, an outdoor program, that is all year round, five days a week for children, kind of largely aged two to five. And then also we have, on a Friday, we have what we call Freedom Friday, which is a home Ed session for children who've been coming to us since they were kind of two or three. And then they've continued their home Ed journey. They just find that the one thing they can't kind of capture in a lot of their other work is that feeling of being dropped off by their carers and being part of a community that's for them, that's their own. And so we kind of give them that on a Friday, and also some children who have made the transition to school, but kind of just want to keep one foot in what we do. That's their Friday session as well. So we often hope that when our program starts off with a family, when the children are two, that we can kind of keep them with us one way or another for a long time, whether that's because siblings attend or whether that's because they keep coming to us for their care and vacations like day camps, or because they're going to have part of their education with us. Yeah, so. We're set on a farm. It's not a real farm. It's a farm that's kind of open to the public at various times of the year. So there are lots of animals. There are sometimes there's things growing, but not in great quantities. There's definitely tractors around during the day, and kind of grumpy, ill tempered farmers, as well as jolly, happy farmers around during the day, some of the animals, the children will know by name, and they will greet in the morning, and they'll be like, Hi Rosemary pig, hi Susie pig. And they'll kind of develop links with and they'll want to check in with every day. And we've had piglets born recently. So it's been really interesting for them to see those getting older and bigger, and then obviously, sometimes the other end of that scale, whereby we've got older animals that aren't there all of a sudden one morning. So that's something to talk about as well. So the farm forms part of what we do was. More than mine, and also it has some fun facilities that we can use as well. Because much as we love to embrace the weather, sometimes it's quite nice to have a little trip inside where they have got a huge sand pit and kind of slides and things like that that we can also use. So that's really nice. So that's kind of our setting. An ideal dream day for us would be would see the children kind of off on their adventures, from when their parents dropped them off to they would choose the route where we were going to go and meander all morning, and then they would, they would kind of dictate what was going to happen next. They would ask if they wanted some of our input. They would ignore us if we suggested something that we didn't really want. They would set the tempest at the pace. We would kind of shepherd them and and maybe draw attention to things. Maybe, if they had neglected their needs a little bit, we could give them that nudge, you know, and then we would end up in our forest, which is kind of fenced all around. It's like our base camp, where they're very, very familiar. And then they would roam about, and we would be completely redundant while they did all the things that they want to do. So yeah, that's a successful day for us when we are standing maybe nursing a cup of coffee, looking around thinking, wow, these children are incredible at doing everything they want to do, and they don't need us at all. That's amazing. And you've posted a couple of fabulous pictures lately online of your recent snowfall. So just a reminder, like for our listeners, that you and the children are outside in year round, in all different kinds of weather. I know you mentioned it's nice to be able to go inside, of course, once in a while, into the farm, but for largely, you are outside dressed, yeah, dressed in race, dressed in whatever, yeah. So the other morning I got there, and it was minus six when I got there, which is not commonly what we would expect around here, necessarily. But it was a beautiful, clear day, and the sun was out. There was snow on the ground. And it's moments like that that, as a practitioner, you just think, oh my goodness, I would be missing this. Because even we wake up some mornings and think, oh my God, why am I doing this? But you it's a bit like exercise. I guess once you start doing it, once you're out there, you think, wow, how lucky am I that I have to come out and experience this. And within moments, really, you realize how special it is. Yeah, sun shining snow on the ground. When you've got all the right layers on you're okay, yeah, and we supply all our kits to the children, and it is, it is a big part of it, but also teaching them to either sit with being a little bit chilly for a little while, you know, you're going to warm up. You're going to go back to your lovely warm home, you know. So it's okay to be a bit chilly for a while, and also that you've got it the children, and we have got it within ourselves to kind of reverse that and get the body heat going and warm up. And you've got this, you know you have so, yeah, I guess that all plays into your kind of theme at the moment of agency, doesn't it?
Julie Cunningham:It does.
Ashley O'Neil:So speaking of agency, I know you mentioned, I mean, your dream day, I think incorporates that. But we're really big on being explicit here and talking about, like, the why and the what that we do and then the intentional what we don't do. So can you talk a little bit about how you provide agency for the children that you're setting over their learning?
Lara Lloyd:I think that is really interesting, yeah, because that's intentionally providing agency. So it's like you say, it's stripping it back and sometimes looking at what you're doing naturally, and saying, but why are we doing that? Why do we feel that that's the way we want to go? And just checking in with what you said there, Ashley, I would say often it's not doing things intentionally. Not doing things is how we ensure the children are kind of, yeah, are embracing the agency that we so want them to seek. So we will talk less. That is a massive one. I think that's a huge recommendation that could go out to so many adults. And I love to talk. You know, I would talk endlessly, if I could about anything, but we tried to talk less at decision making points in particular. So just give them a beat, you know, give them that bit of time. You don't want anyone to be bewildered. But say we've meandered up the track where we always go. We're underneath the oak tree where we. Always make the decisions. Give them that bit of time. You don't need to rush it. We're not going anywhere. We got another, you know, five and a half hours of the session. So just give them a beep. Stand back and see what decisions come. See what suggestions come. So think, yeah, what we don't do? I think we within that we are deliberately a little bit obtuse at times. So possibly when children are struggling with something like putting on a mitten or adjusting their clothing or something, I think it's all too regular that you see people rushing in, adults rushing in and trying to cure something and try, oh, I don't want any struggle. I don't want the children to have any struggle at all. But actually, we will deliberately leave them a little while, and we will deliberately leave children who are having a disagreement, you know, and that's something that when I've had students working with me, we will, you know, literally, I have before, and I sort of extended an arm. No, we're standing back. It's not that we haven't noticed. We are leaving them because we want to see what they're doing. Because if they don't experience any kind of confrontation, they don't experience any kind of discomfort in their relationships, then it's going to be a really big shock one day, isn't it? And so much better that they experience that here and now in our loving environment, where they feel real security and belonging, than some later stage where everything's new and they're the new kid or Yeah. So I think yeah, often the things we don't do are very, very powerful. We also don't enforce that children do things we and I think this word invitations gets banded around a lot in in education, in early years education at the moment, but we very much don't enforce things. We will say, Oh, well, I was thinking that I might go and do so and so, and everyone's welcome. Or I think I might, you know, feel a bit hungry actually, and I might have my lunch. What about you? How are you feeling? Oh, okay, well, I'll see you in a little while. Or I'm going to read this story, because I really feel like I enjoyed it yesterday, and you can join me if you want to, yes, so a lot of that, and if you know that child is not interested in that, then that's perfectly fine. You know, they know what they're interested in, and we don't know whether, if what connections and links a child is making in their brain about dandelions, just while we happen to be talking about magpies, you know, just let them get on with it, because that's what's important to them right now, and that's what's going to stick with them. Yeah, I also heard you, even just when you were describing your ideal day, you talked a lot about agency, right? You said the students choose the path on how you're going to get somewhere, like, an is, I mean, it sounds like they all kind of need to go together, but nonetheless, they have choice in the pack, and then you are choice in the path. And then you also said, and then we might say, Oh, do you notice this? But they can ignore us if they want, right? Like, yeah. I mean, the adults are talking, but maybe what we have to say isn't really all that important. Carry on. When I was training to be a teacher, my eldest son was three, and we had me and my parents had really researched the daycare we wanted to go him to go to. He didn't really even need to go. We thought we better socialize him, you know. And we've been to all these different ones, and which ones did the most activities. And this one, the one we chose, you know, did gardening, and it did baking, and it did French. And so my dad went to pick him up one day, and he said, All right, so you've done French today. And my three year old son looked at him like, well, she did French. I didn't. And that just stuck with me so much at this massively early stage in my teaching career where I hadn't even probably been let loose on other people's children yet. And I was like, oh, right, okay, so to the children you are standing up there. You could be saying anything you like, but they are on their own path, and they are doing their own thing. So don't think that you are so important that they're listening to you, because they're not. And even a three year old recognized that and could tell you that, right? Like it was fantastic, yeah. And you never did get along with school, actually. Sothat's been something that's been that stayed with me a lot. Yeah, yeah, well, and it does sound a little bit dreamy as well, going back to our setting, where we saying they choose the path and then we follow them along. But that's not to say that we bend to their every whim. We discuss with them the practicality.Of that, you know. So if we did all need to stay together in a group, then we would discuss it, and we'd say, well, do you know what little Felix, his little legs probably aren't going to make it round that particular pathway. So I think we better choose something that's more suitable for our youngest members of the team, orsomething like that, and we discuss that with them, because, again, that's part of the responsibility of agency. You're giving them agency, but you're not giving them entitlement. You're giving them the responsibility as well, that the choices that they make have consequences. We are very lucky because we don't spend a lot of the money that we generate, or we're given through funding on resourcing. We spend it on our team, and that's what we invest in. And so we generally always have at least one, sometimes two more members of the team than other nurseries in our county, because we feel that that's what our children benefit from most,even if they're not doing noticeably, doing anything, even if they are deliberately stepping back. They are there if needed, and they are there to facilitate someone wants to go that way, and someone wants to go that way, you know? Yeah, that's I was just thinking so you can honor more of the children's wishes because you have the staff members to do so, yeah, that's a really great perspective on that. And it's both a luxury and a necessity. I guess it's a necessity for the way we want to do it. Other people would see it as a luxury, but I would say, Cut away other costs that are just not important, and they are not impacting directly on what the children want to do in the present moment.
Ashley O'Neil:You said, I love what you said about involving them in the decision making process, and it reminds me of when we were all having conversations together, something I just was, I kept being struck by, is there's a deep honor in you and respect for the child like you. Respect that they deserve to have a seat at the table when it comes to all of the decision making, and that comes along with respect in them, enough to say, you know, this is why we can't do that and informing of them of your decisions. Do you feel like that intrinsic respect you have for your students is universal, is that something you work on a lot with your staff,because I see that varying a lot amongst practitioners that we work with and see andstudents that we have who are going to be teachers someday. So how do you capture that with your your team, so that they really get that that's the point. That's the thing.
Lara Lloyd:Um, I think a lot of that comes through knowing the children really, really well. And when I say that, I think that then become that sounds like a bit of a disappointing answer, but if you do think about the fact that, like I say, we make the spend on team, so we might have September new intake of children, 11 children, four adults. So you can't help but know all of those children really, really well. And with knowing them,come, you know, comes a love for them and an affection for them. And with that comes, you know, trust and yeah, this idea that you want to lift them up, and you want them to realize all their potential, and you wouldn't dream, you wouldn't dream of doing something which didn't honor that. Now, within that, there's also the idea of that, and I don't know whether this is helped by our particular the nature of our work that we are all outside together, fighting the elements together, but we are of a tribe, I suppose. And we are not the adults, and they are the children, necessarily. When we count, we will count all of us to make sure no one gets left behind. We will count, you know, the full range and so. And they will look around and they will say, you know, well, where's Lara gone? You know, we're all over one and so it just becomes natural then that we would listen to everybody, our youngest members, our smallest members, our slowest members, just the same as we would listen to our oldest or the tallest members, you know.And I do think that this kind of links into something I was thinking about from Iceland, something we noticed from the practitioners was that they didn't. Treat children as an alien species. They were not treating them as if they were a completely different, I think, a completely different creature. They were treating as an if they were younger humans, you know which they are. And so we don't need to think carefully and kind of choreograph how we're going to speak to them or act in front of them, because they're people too. We just need to be normal. And so at times when we were kind of maybe hanging about, waiting for a couple of children to get their outdoor clothes on. You know, there wasn't this sense of theater like I would notice this, maybe in a British school, whereby the children would be kept busy and the children would be kept entertained and the children would be kept controlled. There was just hanging about, because sometimes in life, you gotta hang about. You gotta wait for a bus. You gotta wait for the train, you've delayed in traffic, and you've gotta hang about, and you might look at a bird, or you might look at a raindrop on a window, or you might look at your shoe, or you might think about something that happened this morning, and that space is really, really important and natural, and it's natural for Children, the same way it might be natural for you after you've had a day at work and you just want to drink a cup of coffee and no one talk to you for a little while, because children are the same as us. And I think maybe that's something we've talked about as a team, and maybe that's just something that when, yeah, you're all sharing that experience of being outside in the rain or the snow or the sunshine and that joint sometimes not torture, but either expedition and sometimes this marvel of nature, it kind of it's impossible to not feel that they're people just like you, And because they teach you so many things that you just go, Oh, wow. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it like that. Thank you.
Julie Cunningham:Yeah, I think that's really nicely said. We've had some of some similar conversations in being back from Iceland about how refreshing that was, how the children were treated, and not just in one place. I mean, we noticed it right in all of the schools, by a large number of adults, by just across the board. So we completely agree with you, That was refreshing. And yeah, why isn't it that we all do that with children? Yeah,right.
Ashley O'Neil:It seems less exhaustive and just more never, but like, it's one of those things we talk a lot like, well, what will happen if? And sometimes I think practitioners be like, Well, what will happen if we just don't busy them and they just are standing there waiting, and we should reframe it to be like, well, what could happen? It could be really good, right? Rather than this panicky sense of, I have to fill every moment of the day because any downtime is detrimental and they'll all lose it. It could just be really good
Lara Lloyd:or it could be really bad, but do you know what? Sometimes things are really bad, and that's okay, you know? That's all right. That's all part of it, isn't it, you know? And then we say, alright, I, or you, made this decision to do this, and it didn't really work out so well. But you know what? We're all still here, and we're all still friends, so that's great, too. You know, we need, you know, safe failure, don't we safely make a different
Julie Cunningham:- make a different decision.
Ashley O'Neil:Yeah, yeah, and we can talk about it, and I agree, like talking to them as full people, like a full human. I hear that when you talk about your setting and your kids, and I did when we were in Iceland, and we saw that too, and it's just it makes such a difference.
Julie Cunningham:Laura, you mentioned not spending the majority of your resources on things, so to speak, right? And I know that since having talked with you in Iceland, that since your students are outdoors, that you often don't take along wagons full, wagon loads full of enrichment materials, right? And so I think sometimes it's really tempting for adults, along with doing a lot of talking, is to throw a lot of to keep kids busy, right, to not let kids hang about and to throw a lot of things at them. Well, if you're bored with this, how about if you try this and so on. And so I wonder if you could maybe just talk about what that looks like in your program a little bit. But then also, what do you think, sort of like when kids get to decide what it is and when they have to use their imagination for the things that they're playing with? Like, how does that fit into sort of our conversation?
Lara Lloyd:Okay, so stuff, I suppose, is the general umbrella topic here. So I would say a few things. One is that even we as practitioners have to reassure ourselves quite a lot of the time that they don't need more stuff or busying or us to plan something. So we go through cycles of this between us as a team all the time where we think, Oh, actually, do you know, what? Should we be doing more? Should we be doing more? Should we be providing more? And then we just then we kind of say, no, no, that's not our philosophy. And we we become grounded again. So that's something. Another thing is that, and I think a thing that spurs that is that you see all these beautiful sort of provocation, invitation, things online, and you'll have, you know, like a penguin and ice blocks, or, you know, a rainbow and all of this kind of thing. Yeah, that is not, that is not us. That's not what we're doing at all, even though all of that is really pretty. But do you know what we were talking about? We were saying that all of that kind of thing is actually adults play. It's adults having a great time. And if I had a student that came and wanted to do all that kind of thing, wanted to set the dinosaurs in the jelly and then invite the children to play with it, wanted to,I don't know that's so far removed I am from it, but wanted to make stars from twigs and glitter and things, I'd say, Yeah, you, you know, you go for it. Nothing's wrong. We're not purists in the fact that anything is in particularly wrong. But just know that you are the one getting the joy from this. You are the one that's enjoying it. And if a child comes along and they enjoy it too, that's great, but they will most likely learn more from a puddle than they will do from what you're trying to provide. But if you want to role model the kind of play that you like to engage in, then that's great. And we, I always encourage that with the team. I always say, you know, you know, if you want to do painting, then you say, I think I intend to go and do some painting actually. And I'm really fancy. I'm using purple today, and it's not an act. I want it. Don't want it to be inventing things authentically. If you fancy doing painting, then go off and on you go, because modeling that sort of enjoyment is really great for children. And similarly, if they invite you to enjoy in their play with them, and you've had enough, then it's okay to say, Do you know what? I've had enough of that now, and I'm gonna, I'll see you later. You know, because that's normal, isn't it? Just because you're and that goes back to what we're saying before. Just because you're taking care of them doesn't mean that you're the puppet. You know, You're your own person. We need to model that in relationships. Back to stuff, our forest school for some other forest school settings, they would come in and they would absolutely they would rip us to shreds. We've got Barbie dolls hanging around because people have given us some Barbie dolls. We've got a canoe that is full of water. We've got we've got all sorts of non natural, odd things that hang about in our forest for a little while. And if they deliver some play value to the children, and there give a little hint to their imaginary games, and that's great. If there's been a while where they haven't sparked anything for the children, then they'll probably be on their way out. But yes, some people would have kittens if they saw the things we've got in there, you know.
Ashley O'Neil:So Laura, what specifically about learning or play, or learning through play in nature. Do you think is agentic?
Lara Lloyd:Um, I think there's just such a lot to talk about with nature in itself. And one of my bugbears at the moment is this kind of language around getting out into nature, whereas in reality, we're human animals, and we're meant to be outside. So it shouldn't be this, this big difference that we're going outside. It should actually be what we're doing as a baseline. I think the benefits, particularly in nature, for me, are that it is restores us to a place where the visual noise is greatly decreased, and stimulation is reduced, and then we haven't got all these other things competing for our attention. I can't believe still the amount of visual noise in early years classrooms in the UK, and even there's a lot of settings now whereby they are trying to make their indoors very, very natural, but it's still full of stuff, you know? And I'm just like, you don't need to do that. Just go outside. And it's still often in indoor settings, it's very sterile. And that's another thing about it outdoors, is. That it is unpredictable and messy and changing, and I suppose in that way, it has agency over itself, doesn't it? We don't have agency over nature. We have in this country this week, we have had huge, excessive rainfall and floods. We have had snow last week, which caused the floods. We have had winds over the weekend. We cannot control it unless and less in our lives. Can any of us do that? And so we need to accept it, and we need to be resilient towards it. And I suppose all of that combines into one aspect to why nature is a great place to teach it children with agency, but also it's the fact that it's this ever changing canvas of the seasons, and that you can't truly learn about something by someone telling you you can't Learn about autumn by someone telling you you've got to experience it and then experience it again, and there's this huge time difference in between the first time and the second time and the next time, whereby you're taking it in in your own way, and your knowledge is Building in your own speed. And I think that that's one of the reasons why learning in nature is particularly helpful. Love
Ashley O'Neil:that because you think about, we talk a lot about the third classroom and how like or the third teacher, and how the space is really a teacher and as an educator, and when you have this natural outside space, it teaches kids to be responsive to something that's so authentic, right? Like we contrive these problems and these puzzles and these things for kids to work their way through, to respond to. But when we're outside, that just is, it is what it is. And that log has always been there, but now that log is rotten. So if you walk on it right, it's going to go your foot's going to go through. And so teaching them to be responsive, but something that's completely authentic and not made up at all is just beautiful. I also just love what you said about the time in between the seasons and how they experience it, and then there's time that goes by, and then they see it again. And from that clinical science, and I don't mean science is clinical, but we often make it seem clinical and sterile, right? We try to have these ongoing investigations where we get kids to engage in science over a long period of time. But you're right, they go outside and they're engaging in an ecosystem over a long period of time and observing the changes that are happening inside of it.
Lara Lloyd:And that's I guess, if we were set in our I guess if we were explaining our curriculum, we would talk about universal truths. So we would say, right, so you're out in nature. That's the best place to be, because it's where your body wants you to be, so where you can concentrate the best. And then you when you're there and you're in the present, you're not in your head. You're going to see wet and dry. You're going to see hot and cold. You're going to see decay. You're going to see rebirth. You're going to see all the actual essential universal concepts that make up our world so and that is not so that when you get into high school science, you can ace your grades and do really well. That's so that you can be a really useful human, you know, and in as much as you know, understanding how to do laundry with your partner for your children, or, you know, reversing climate change, but you cannot possibly have a hope in understanding any of that if you haven't put Your foot through that rotten log,
Ashley O'Neil:Was it you I saw that you had, like, look after yourself, looked after each other, look after nature. Are those your three rules? Yeah. And then why do you put them in the order, on purpose? And why? Yeah,
Lara Lloyd:Mm, hmm, yeah. So a lot of the time that rules associated with a setting are don't do this, don't do that. So we definitely wanted to have something that was positive action rather than preventative action. And we looked around, particularly at the time of COVID. We listened to all the noise to do with mental health, and we thought, right, we've got to we've got to ensure that we are starting with a generation of children who look after themselves first and truly believe that as well not just say it or and don't do it like a lot of maybe my generation, word or not do it in spite of other people. People, perhaps, like maybe another separate generation would, but who actually believe that is the most important thing for them? So we think that being out in nature teaches you to look after yourself in a really tangible way, because you really are cold, sometimes you really are hot. You might sting yourself on a nettle. You burn a lot of fuel, and you get hungry, and then you get grumpy, you know? So we tend to think it's a really easy way of the children seeing when they and their friends need to cover their needs really, and we talk a lot about needs, and have we met all your needs? This is a point in our day where we might have a little audit of whether we've checked in out all of our needs, and getting that vocabulary in there really early. And I guess it's all based kind of on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, whereby, how can we possibly expect children to reach the top of that pyramid and the self actualization, which is creativity and mastery that comes in their play, if they are hungry, if they are thirsty, if they need a rest, you know? And so can't possibly ask them to do that. Can we? We need to satisfy the needs first, and they can't depend on other people for that. You need to do that for themselves.
Ashley O'Neil:And that, I think, circles back to earlier in our conversation. You respect kids. No, it sounds like you just respect kids now, if they don't want to participate, if that doesn't sound good to them, if they're not hungry yet, if they would prefer to not play that game or read that book, you would respect their no and I think that's so powerful, because how do we teach children to trust their intuition and their internal body cues if someone else is already always externally telling them we're doing this, this is what you want to do. This is fun, right? This is what we have to do. A cost of that is that we teach kids to kind of downplay with our own needs. So I love that you are really teaching them to be in tune with their own body and the story their body is telling themselves. And that comes from the adults saying we hear your no and that that has value. So that's amazing, yeah,
Lara Lloyd:and it's not a problem. You'll know is not a problem. I think that's powerful too well,
Julie Cunningham:When? When? Do you know when? Or maybe you know from your own children? I don't know, but do you know when the students leave you and this and they go to a more traditional school setting, like, do they get to continue that feeling that way about or, or is it just all over the place? And there's no way to really tell, right? Because this seems like really magical, and you'd want for that to continue as they went through more traditional schooling after five years old,
Lara Lloyd:yeah, so, um, our setting will have. I mean, it's quite small. I don't know whether I really said that, but we might only have maybe 16 to 20 children in the year, and then they may go then to 16 or 20 different schools. So they often don't go together, because they carefully selected us from all the other settings around so that they will then spread back out again. It's our hope, and we have seen with with other children that we've stayed in touch with that because they've been with us. They are rather than as I think, that their carers fear, they will then be wild and difficult to tame and not fit into systems. They are extremely content young people who understand why there have to be systems, and when they get to their formal schooling, and they understand the nature of belonging to a community and doing things at the same time as the rest of their community. And so rather than kind of nurturing, sort of prima donnas that say I only do what I want to do when I want to do it. I think because you've given them that time and space and agency at an important period, they then are usually at a point where they're like, Well, I'm I'm going to go along with this because I can see it makes sense. Yeah, because I'm a good citizen, but not because I'm a people pleaser, but you know, and we kind of got a balanced outlook towards it, because, um Yeah, listening to adults we we tend to find and we hope that, because they've mixed with adults who generally only talk when they got something really worthwhile to say. The adults that they've met with love them and have treated them with respect that they're going to come into contact with new adults that are the same, and so they tend to really like their teachers when they get to formal schooling and listen carefully to what they've got to say. So yeah. Seems
Ashley O'Neil:like you've given them some of the language to articulate their own needs. And I think that is such a powerful gift, right? I remember when I was in the classroom teaching, it makes a difference when you're an overwhelmed new first grade teacher, and you have a child who can say, I'm really tired today, or I had a tough day, or a tough morning with whatever or I'm really hungry and a child is in tune enough to tell you what their needs are. That's a huge tool that extends no matter where they end up and what relationships or what adults they come across, because the ability for them to explain and express what their needs are, versus having some sort of big feeling or maintain just being grumpy all day because they can't pinpoint what the thing is, that's a huge gift for those kids, no matter where they
Lara Lloyd:go. Okay, so we've got this funny thing where, yeah, we don't really fit in with school teachers and other settings that work with little children in the UK, because you'll be talking to them about love and nurture and belonging in your setting, or giving children agency, or letting them to take risks, and they'll all nod along with you and sort of say, Oh yeah, I hear what you say. I hear what you say. But then they'll kind and kind of turn around and sort of start talking about, you know, the themes they're going to cover this term, or how they're going to decorate their classroom, or, like, how they're struggling to get all the children to write their own names before they go to school and all the preparation they need to make for them. And you're thinking, oh, right, we don't fit in with you, because you've nodded along with everything I've said, But you You don't really believe it. And then you'll go and kind of hang out with the Forest School guys, or maybe this applies a little bit to the home ed community as well, and they'll be kind of like, you know, Oh, nothing, academic matters. Let's all just kind of like howl at the moon and, you know, dance in the Twilight and all of that kind of thing. Which, you know, I love all of that, obviously, but I'm, I kind of find myself in this kind of desolate, lonely middle ground whereby I, yeah, I want to, you know, wade through a stream, and think that's really important. But I also think that giving children agency over their learning and letting them jump in a puddle or balance on a wobbly log, or or all of the wonderful experiences we like to do, I think they're the best preparation for academic learning? I don't think they're instead of I think that they are the best preparation. And actually, Julie, this leads me to something that we experienced in Iceland, whereby we saw children climbing trees. And lots of children climb trees in my setting, I climb trees in my setting. And we got back, and we reported back to the group about how we'd seen children climbing trees, and then one of the members of the group kind of said, and that's so great, because they've let them climb trees, and now they're going to have really strong hands and wrists, and then that means they're going to be a really great writer. And I'm like, I really took objection to that, because I said no, they let them climb trees because they wanted to climb trees. Um, yes, that child might be a really great writer, but not because their hands are strong enough for the mechanics of writing, but because they are curious enough to seek out their very own unique viewpoint, and one day they'll want to write that down, because they've got something to say.
Ashley O'Neil:And it's so true, I feel like the moment we say that we do do something for the sake of a future academic goal, it just is like taking a need knitting needle to the balloon. That is the magic of the original thing, right? Like, if suddenly these teachers go, Okay, I'm gonna take my kids outside to climb trees, and then suddenly their their fine motor skills are going to be tremendous, and then they're mandating that kids are outgoing. And it just becomes one more thing that an adult led an adult driven experience. Yeah, it's kind of missing the point of what it was in the first place.
Unknown:Absolutely, yeah, I love that analogy. Yeah, the balloon like, oh,
Ashley O'Neil:every day it's not fun. I'm
Lara Lloyd:gonna go and do a big page of math.
Julie Cunningham:To climb trees, to be better writers. Now go climb that tree, because we need your writing. We need your hand to be strong for writing like that would be a you'd be like, what why we
Ashley O'Neil:do? We make it so much harder on ourselves and like we kind of just can't let it be its own thing. For the sake of itself, right? Like, it's just really fun to do all of these things, and having strong hands is great for opening jars, and it's great for, you know, like turning on faucets. It's great for opening the door, to go inside, to do all these other things, but handwriting, that's what we're going to put out to our focus and
Lara Lloyd:and sometimes we get talking about kind of resilience and looking after yourself. And it sounds like, you know, I'm wanting all three year olds to be like, mega survivalists or something like that. I feel like people are looking at me like, Oh, this is a little bit cruel. And I'm like, Well, no, because if, if we did take away all of academic world and the manufactured human world, you know, we'd be brought back to, you know, are you dry when it's wet? Are you warm when it's cold? These are the important things, you know. And that's the kind of person I want to be around if something disastrous happens. Is someone who can sort it out with their strong hands, you know, absolutely.
Ashley O'Neil:So I feel like we've covered this. But if we were to ask you, why do you feel like agency is important to children? Is there anything else that you wanted to say? Well, written
Lara Lloyd:in my notes, I have written, well, why is agency important to people in general? And I suppose that is exactly what we've covered. Yeah, agency is important to children because it's important to humans, because, you know, without getting like, do political or historical, without agency, who are we? You know, it really is the greatest necessity and luxury that we can we can have agency and freedom, isn't it? So I think largely, when we're thinking about the children that we're trying to shepherd and look after, we're thinking about their well being as time goes on and we're thinking, Well, if we trust them, respect them, and show them that they have agency over their choices, then they're going to understand consequences, and they're going that is going to give them a really secure foundation, and that is going to let them into the world feeling that they've got something to give, something To offer, and we're hopefully not going to have this another kind of generation of children who who feel that they are not good enough, or they're not heard, or that they are have been damaged by the world in Some way, I suppose. Yeah.
Ashley O'Neil:Thank you for listening to this episode of teach wonder. The show is brought to you by the Center for Excellence in STEM education. You.