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