Stepping Off The Timetable Train.Time To Rethink Childhood

6

30 am alarm signs get up

shower get dressed 7 am waking the

children

get them up washed and dressed 7

30 everyone sitting around the breakfast

table to have breakfast before brushing

teeth coats on

in the car and buckled up ready to be

dropped off to school

along the four mile journey into town

i find a car parking space and i’m at my

desk for nine am

my day continues like this timetabled

you see i worked in the professional

service sector so i was used to working

with a daily timesheet

each case or client i would be working

with would be allocated a code

and every 10 minutes of my day would be

accounted to whichever case

or client i would be working on there

simply could be no unaccounted time

in my day i leave the office at 5 pm

pick the children up along the one hour

commute home have dinner in the table

for 6

30 perhaps going out that evening to

some extracurricular activities

children in bed for 8 30 uniforms ready

chores done fall into bed ready to get

on exactly

the same treadmill again the next day

my name’s diane koplevski and this was

my life over 20 years ago

as i was expecting my youngest child i

decided i didn’t want to go back

to my busy timetable to work career at

least not for a while

so call it hormones if you will but i

bought a small day nursery the week

after giving birth to my youngest son

and he was just short of three months

old when i handed him over to his new

caregiver

on our first day at our new nursery

i had a business background a post-grad

in law

and a mba surely running a small day

nursery would be no more challenging

than any of my previous jobs

but how wrong could i be

now the weeks and months that followed

brought my life into turmoil

my youngest son in fact was in and out

of hospital for the first 18 months of

his life

at the same time i helped care for my

terminally ill mother

who lost her battle to skin cancer on

mothering sunday of 2003

followed not long after by my husband’s

father

but i was still busy running my day

nursery was juggling all of this with

being a busy working mom

but i wasn’t on my own in this busy

phase of life

you see every single parent that i would

meet as they were dropping their

children into nursery and picking them

up wasn’t exactly the same position

we were all in the same treadmill doing

the very best we could do

to cope with the challenges of being

working parents

so whilst these first few weeks and

months were challenging for me on a

personal level the unexpected happened

i absolutely fell in love with the early

year sector

i loved the people that i worked with

such an inspirational workforce

and i remain to this day and all of the

work that they do with children and

young people

and i think it really needs to be said

during this pandemic how they have gone

over

and above often putting the needs

of their the children and families that

we work with

above their own and how they’ve done

this with such amazing good grace

yet as a key working sector we’ve been

so rarely recognized

but above all of this i am and day in

day out continue to be inspired most by

the children

and young people themselves so let me

take you back to my first day

in nursery it was all new to me so i

spent the first day

observing in the pre-school room and

along the wall of the pre-school room

was this tree and time table

and with it went from one end of the

room to the other

and behind the train were carriages and

each carriage

would have an activity and a time

allocated to it

9 am circle time 9

15 song and rhyme time

9 30 puzzles and tabletop games

9 45 story time

10 15 snack time

10 30 art and craft and this would go on

so on and so on right through until home

time

i was not impressed with the timetable

train

i really didn’t want children becoming

so used to being timetabled

at such a young age that this would be

all they would ever know out of life

so i talked to the staff and asked them

maybe to go at a different pace

the child’s pace now this presented

challenges staff struggled to deviate to

be impulsive to make decisions

and the children had become so

apparently used to the timetable tree

and they just didn’t cope without having

one

hardly surprising i thought as young

parents were all told that children

thrive and retain

so reluctantly after a few weeks the

train timetable went back up again

but i was determined to find a better

solution and for a couple of years i

studied several early years programs and

one such study

led me to an international conference in

northern italy to the town of

reggio amelia i was wowed by their

approach to early education

as i observed in the nurseries in regio

emilia i could see that children

actively led their days

they actively were consulted about

decisions which impacted on them in

nursery

and their beautiful environments were

known as the third educator

so i come back inspired to make a

difference but this time i started with

our younger age groups

now don’t get me wrong in every nursery

there will be set times for snack time

lunch time not be changing sleep

but all else looks completely different

for us

we started by eliminating all of the

plastic from our rooms and we donated

all of our plastic toys to mother and

toddler centers

instead we replaced these with loose

parts

unauthentic items such as pots and pans

in our home corner

proper dress up clothes proper adult

clothes and children’s clothes in our

dress-up corners instead of princess and

pirate costumes

and we no longer used plastic plates and

plastic cups and we replaced these with

proper crockery and proper glasses

our art no longer evolved around

pre-printed sheets along the walls

displayed and led like by adults as if

it was almost an art display in a

gallery

instead it became individually focused

we set up due areas

in our in our art corners with

ingredients where children can make up

their own fresh play-doh each day

they use clay and loose parts and this

has replaced our traditional pom-poms

and glitters

our environments are beautifully calming

and beautifully natural and the learning

which happens there

far outweighs our plastic fantastic

time constrained nursery of old

we also established northern ireland’s

first registered wraparound care in

primary schools back in 2006

where children are free to lead and

direct their own play during all of

their time with us

now again don’t get me wrong there will

be extra curricular activities happening

there will be interest etc depending on

the time of year

but when children come back we

facilitate time

for them to direct and lead their own

play using new electronics

during their time with us we’re play

enablers we’re play facilitators

and this gives children the much

unstructured and untimed untimetable

period

in their day which the theorists tell us

is so

important to their well-being i kid you

not the children’s lives were

transformed when we removed this

timetabling from their day

none more so than my youngest son who’d

been with us from three months old and

stayed right up

until our after schools in primary seven

he left us to go to an all boys

post-primary school

where most of the children and most of

his peers went on to play school sport

join the school band but his love was

for all things theatrical

singing choreography music theater

he did that and continues at university

to do this with pride

not allowing himself to fall in line

with what his peers and his teachers in

society in school believed to be the

norm

my oldest son on the other hand he’d

grown up in a timetable lifestyle

where parents caregivers and teachers

made all of the decisions which

impacted him in school in child care and

at home

and i’m guilty of being that parent

he grew up with a love of sport rugby in

particular

and that became his focus in

post-primary now if you’re from northern

ireland you will know that saint

patrick’s day is famous for many things

but also schools cup finals for rugby

football

and gaelic are all held in the state for

some young people this is quite

literally the culmination of their

playing days from the ages of five or

six

uh from they played mini rugby in

schools and my son

like all of the peers when he went to a

rugby playing post primary school

dreamed of making

the first 15.

each year would bring tournaments the

first main tournament was the medallion

shield and fourth form so around the

ages of 14 and 15.

that was like a mini version of the

school’s cup final and my son was lucky

to win two medallion shields one of

which he played up a year early and

third form

after this of course would be the

school’s cup competition itself

for some young people as i said this

goes back to the ages of five or six and

even younger when they could hold a

rugby ball in their hand

and for these rugby playing schools and

some of their coaches

this is quite literally the equivalent

of the world cup

so on the morning when my son reached

the dream

the pinnacle of his school days which

was to play in the final of the school’s

cup at the kingspan stadium he told us

that win or lose that day

he would never pick up a rugby ball

again

you see he enjoyed the sport but he was

burned out with the timetabling off it

and that would be before he would ever

get

on the career treadmill we thought it

was exhausting that day but he’s kept

his promise

and i’m proud of the decisions he took

to put his own interests on his academic

studies first but if i could turn back

time

and do things differently i most

certainly would

you see i can pin back to third year

when he

had not only the timetabling and the

scheduling of the sport and his

academics of third year

but he was also asked to play up a year

in fourth year so had to build in their

time tabling

where his academic teachers and his

sports coaches put him under such

immense pressure

when all he wanted to do was to

represent a school

at a sport in which he was quite

talented but this literally killed

the love of his sport and not one adult

consulted with him

we did take change after that but that’s

a story for another day

if i could leave you with one thing

to change all of this and consult with

children and young people it is this

despite all of the travesties of the

covert 19 pandemic it has given us the

gift of time

down horrific as it has been for many

many families juggling both

homeschooling and working

it gave us the gift of chat of time

it gave us the gift of children having

to be innovative in their play

they played in their gardens in the

vicinity of their own homes they made up

play in rules and games

i now i have 20 years experience of

doing what i do

which is giving children the freedom and

facilitating play

these children become resilient they’re

decision makers

they’re problem solvers from a young age

they are the thinkers and doers of our

next generation

these are the children who when employed

as adults won’t be resistant to change

so before it’s too late pause and think

consult with children and young people

before things go back to normal

what do they really want to go back to

and rethink that over timetable schedule

that’s on the fridge

of many family homes and wouldn’t it be

lovely when in 20 years

i look back on the horrific time that

many of us have endured in 2020

and 2021 that one of the everlasting

legacies

of the covet 19 pandemic was that we as

adults consulted more with children

that we give them back their childhood

and we give them both the time

and the freedom to play