Beginnings

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Hi. Simon here. I'm looking back on the first six weeks of my time in PK. It's already been a fantastic experience and I'm really feeling lucky to be doing this. 

Even before we began, I knew we had a brilliant team. Nominally, we're three teachers and three teaching assistants, but in practice, the teaching assistants have a lot more experience with the young ones, such understanding of how to get alongside them and so many brilliant ideas. It's my first year with three and four year olds, so I'm feeling a fair amount of impostor syndrome!

We three teachers have got this though - we like to read and discuss together. During the lockdown we were reading Kath Murdoch's book The Power of Inquiry. Over the summer we read Anna Ephgrave's Planning in the Moment with Young Children. It was so nice to have a book breakfast together talking about it!

Having wonderful colleagues, and ones who enjoy spending time reflecting on how children grow and learn best is such a plus. We're not following anyone else's agenda either, and we speak freely with each other.

We have three brilliant classes of fantastic kids. You can see some of what we get up to on our instagram page.
Play in PK
What are the challenges for me?
  • Being new to it - needing more ideas, more knowledge about good approaches and activities;
  • Most of my children have English as a second or third language (Spanish is the language most spoken by the children). I miss having an easy means of communicating with my class, of sharing stories that everyone can follow, of sharing ideas and thoughts. I feel like it's harder to have that sense of identity as a class of shared ideas.
  • Some children still not feeling completely comfortable with being at school.
Things I'm enjoying:
  • Getting to know the children;
  • Seeing their concentration, their deep involvement in the play and creativity of the classroom;
  • The beginning of shared identity and at-homeness, circle times with songs and games, children choosing books to be read, friendships being made;
  • Finding resources and materials that allow the children to lead the way,;
  • Planning together that has no wasted time - that's all about making the timetable for as much uninterrupted play for the children, and sharing great ideas for what we can present to them for their play and inquiry;
  • Thinking about maths learning at this very beginning of schooling;
  • Seeing my colleagues provide for and interact with the children in PK.


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