Round Three: Toddler Room Team Leader

The most growth I experienced in regards to portfolios happened in this job. This job ended up being the job from hell, but I learned a great deal and there were amazing supports in place. I also formed a really good relationship with the other ECT room leader and together we forged the portfolio frontier at this particular service.

I worked in a long day care service in a toddler’s room with 13 children aged 2-3 years old with a certificate III trained assistant. My team partner was not comfortable with managing portfolios, so the task of looking after the content of about 32 books fell to me. She did in time though develop excellent skills in helping me file the content and put them into the books. It was invaluable support.

I had 30 minutes of programming time per child per month and then a further hour per week for program reflections. It worked out to be about 3 hours one week and 5 hours the next based upon my shifts (early shift = 7am start and late shift = 10am start).

In subsequent drafts of this publication, I wrote a pretty scathing description of the portfolios. Since I have started writing this book, I have come to realise that some people do their best and others don’t care. There is no reason to pass judgement on their work. This publication is not about their work. It’s about my work and my thinking and my learning and growth. So having said that, I grew professionally because I was able to critique their work and improve upon it. I will simply say that much of their work was handwritten with photos that didn’t necessarily match up with the written work. There was no linking to development or any curriculum framework. There were a great many gaps in their work in my opinion.

We used A4 art diaries and we had to paste the content into the books. It meant we had to cut all A4 sized papers down with a margin so that they would fit into the books. It was quite time consuming and with 32 books to maintain, it was ALOT of time during sleep time and other quiet times during the day putting content into books.  This cutting and sticking, was a colossal waste of time and natural resources.

Each page of paper in an art book, had another page stuck to it. One page of content would consist of: slice, slice, slice, slice, pull double sided sticky tape and rip, then stick, rip, stick rip, stick rip, stick rip. Peel backing, peel backing, peel backing, peel backing. Then line up page and stick down. All this work for ONE single observation.

So, if you had five entries over a month: (1) slice, slice, slice, slice, pull double sided and rip, then stick, rip, stick rip, stick rip, stick rip. Peel backing, peel backing, peel backing, peel backing. (2) slice, slice, slice, slice, pull double sided and rip, then stick, rip, stick rip, stick rip, stick rip. Peel backing, peel backing, peel backing, peel backing. (3) slice, slice, slice, slice, pull double sided and rip, then stick, rip, stick rip, stick rip, stick rip. Peel backing, peel backing, peel backing, peel backing. (4) slice, slice, slice, slice, pull double sided and rip, then stick, rip, stick rip, stick rip, stick rip. Peel backing, peel backing, peel backing, peel backing.  (5) slice, slice, slice, slice, pull double sided and rip, then stick, rip, stick rip, stick rip, stick rip. Peel backing, peel backing, peel backing, peel backing. That is in one book ... Image that for 32 children who had a range of two to seven entries per month. I don’t know how I made it through all that work on top of the actual creation of the observations and collections of artefacts!

It was at this time that I became really passionate about working with portfolios and when I wanted to work on a book with my colleague. Suffice it to say, I’m now doing this on my own, but ideas sprang from shared discussions and research. If we had written a book at this time, it would look totally different to the one I am now working on. My understanding, experience, skills, philosophy have changed so much in the past 2 years, as they will in the next 2 years I would imagine! Carpe Diem though ...

Round Four: First Year as Toddler & Preschool Room Team Leader

In my next context, I worked with roughly 45 children (30 per day) aged 2-5years old with a team of four including myself. It is a long day care service and it is called the preschool room. I started to work with an almost Diploma and two assistants. My team and the groupings of children have changed so much over the course of 18 month that I am not even going to go into them all. There were 12 changes. TWELVE. I’m the ONE consistent adult in the room. It’s actually quite frustrating, why plan on something, when in a month’s time it will be obsolete or changed. At the moment I have a qualified partner and two assistants with 26 children aged 2-5 years old. I design the program and implement it with their help and support.

I get 2 hours a week programming which is often interrupted and I find it difficult getting into the groove of it all. I also did alot of work in the room alongside my children or when they are asleep or when things are quiet. I only coped with this role because of the skills I learned in my previous two jobs ~ especially the latter. I have learned that challenge leads to growth and innovation.

Round Four: Second Year as Toddler & Preschool Room Team Leader

I have had to rethink how I engage with portfolios this year. I have engaged in a great deal of reflection at home, while at the shops, even while having coffee, in the shower or making dinner.

In my previous experience, portfolios have been these open ended creations individual to the child, the service and the educator. I think that can be quiet dangerous. In my experience of the past few years, the children who come full time, or who are more extroverted, or who spend the most time with their educators are the ones who get the most content in their portfolios. The children who are more timid and shy, more independent of their educators or who simply have more quiet personalities or just don’t “take” to the whole early childhood service experience are the ones who miss out. So what do we do to try and even out the playing field? 

The answer I came up with was to create sort of format to use. This would mean:

· that all the staff, regardless of their experience or education, would know what the portfolios was expected to look like.

· each child would have a more consistent and even portfolio

· there would be balance within the content of the portfolio.

· that when portfolios are transferred with the children to another educator, then the educator can easily continue with that child’s progress.

· It is easier for educators to ask for help and support. 

I am the one who hates to be told what to do and how to do it. I do not like following “focus child systems” where you have to observe Samara on Monday, and Olivia on Tuesday and Aiden on Wednesday. I do not operate like that. I know that others do, and they thrive on it, but that is simply not me.

The Australian government has put out a national learning framework for the early childhood years which is to be implemented nationally.  This will of course change the way that many practitioners operate. I know that not all centres use portfolios for the children attending their service. I also know that many services also use a portfolio of artwork and photos and maintain separate developmental information on each child. That is just so much work in that. What if you could streamline things? What if you could have everything in the one place? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Well, I think it does.

I have found that I was somewhat frustrated at times because I have only set aside a certain amount of space for individual observations. As a result, my prolific children who are getting ready to go off to school, are doing more work than I have space for, and I’m strongly driven to document their efforts and creations. These books are all about them after all. So, as a result, I am slightly altering the format for those children. I am giving them more space, and allowing them more opportunity to construct their own books.  I have still set a “minimum” for the portfolios, but I’ve relaxed the structure and come to a happy medium. I am pleased with where this is heading.

Personal Philosophy of The Portfolio ...

I’ve been doing lots of research on children’s developmental portfolios ... I’ve been doing it for years and years actually. I don’t remember what was discussed at university at all ... so even if it were, it obviously didn’t make much of an impression.  What I have read about portfolios places such a huge emphasis on “assessment” and “development” and what the child can or cannot do. How much of that is really important? Yes, a child should be confident in achieving certain milestones at little school, but how much of that is really truly important? We all develop in our own ways, in our own time. We all get there in the end.

So how do I view portfolios today? I love them. I resent them at times to be honest, but for the most part, I greatly enjoy creating them and working on them with the children and sharing them with the families. I love it when the parents tell me how much they love the portfolios and how much they have enjoyed looking at them with their children and families. I appreciate the feedback about the learning that the children are taking home.

So what do I think of when I am putting together a portfolio?

·    Does this make a good story? Does this story share an aspect of the child’s unique personality? Has the child learned someone wonderful about the world? Or themselves? Does this story illustrate the relationships the child has? Why is this moment special?  What does it say about the child and their experience?

·    How many children are involved in this experience (and therefore, how many portfolios can I put this into?!? 5? 7? 10? Whoohoo!).

·    All these photos are really charming, but on their own, can I really justify the time and expense of putting this into a single observation? i.e. I have to frame it, write about it in context, and then relate it to something of importance (not all the time mind you, but sometimes).

·    Does this help to reflect the child’s experience within their social contexts? (learning environment, home, local community?)

·     Does this entry reflect the curriculum of the learning environment?

In thinking about putting this book together I started to look at my own past work and it was really quite enlightening. When I was looking at some of my previous work, I had a book of photos of a full portfolio... I then photocopied this so there four images of A4 pages upon the one page ... I could then look at them critically and write ideas and notes on the large white margins. I could see my style of work from two years ago ... what I thought was memorable and important, what I said what I should have said, or what I would say now! I could also see how the portfolio came together and whether it flowed for me (the professional) and how it might look to a parent or another professional.