A four letter word - LOVE
A heart-warming blog post written by one of our talented kaiako/teachers at our Creators @ Waipa Early Learning Centre.
"Here at Creators you will find a room filled with educated individuals, bringing with them varying life experiences stories and characteristics that all have one collective philosophy when it comes to the care of tamariki: love leads."
Love. A four letter word that we hear in sentences daily, hourly in fact. “I love that top”, “I love her as an actress”, “Oh I love that type of chocolate”. We have been attuned to use this word at a mundane level, adding it to our daily vocabulary like we add salt to cooking, but what does it really mean to us?
If you had to describe how love felt, for some it's the actions they receive: that secure feeling of an embrace that wraps you up like a soft blanket on a cold winter's day or the knowingly gentle hand pat in anxious times that calms the fast pitter-patter rhythm that your heart takes on. For others, it’s the warm feeling that bubbles up when you hear words of encouragement or promises of reliability and security. Every person has an intricate weaving of wires, like veins, that travel around their heart, led by emotional experiences that shape the paths of those wires. But how do we navigate these wired paths? Through love, through relationships, through connections. When you break down what love really means, it's an endless tale that always comes back to those fundamental connections we have made in our journey we call life.
Here at Creators, you will find a room filled with educated individuals, bringing with them varying life experiences, stories and characteristics that all have one collective philosophy when it comes to the care of tamariki: love leads. We approach our day with the needs of our tamariki at the forefront of our actions: to continue to build our relationships and connections with them to bring the feeling of security as they walk in the door. How are they going to feel? Have they had a good morning? Has something happened during the night or weekend that we don’t know about that will affect their day? Isn’t it great that when we graduated, we received our pack of superhuman armour that provides us with the ability to mind-read...Right?! Well despite our lack of armour we still need to reflect on those questions: how do we mind-read, how do we read the hearts desires and needs of the child when they walk through those doors, how do we discover that secret? LOVE. There’s that word again, love. A four letter word that seems miniscule, easy to wash over as we get wrapped up in theoretical hypotheses and piles of books that explain every teaching method under the sun that has been invented. But we cannot wash over it, we must embrace it!
Do you remember those ice breaker games we played at school when you started the new year? Or when you started a new job and over-thought all of those littles details, such as what type of lunch you should bring or how to wear your hair? The feeling of utter doom as you contemplated and processed how much you revealed about yourself to a room filled with strangers. Months down the track, those feelings don’t surface anymore do they? Why?
Because of love. Because of your ability to build connections with those around you, to strengthen your relationships through your experiences that fostered trust. For tamariki, it is exactly the same! We cannot expect a child to express themselves freely in their emotions, voice their anxieties or joys, to get stuck into a provocation if they don’t feel a trusted connection with the people around them: if they don’t feel loved. There is a quote from the bible that always speaks to me, something I often reflect on during those times of appreciate or even worry.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
-1 Corinthians 13:4 7-8
How perfect is that? I am not saying that those things are easy to achieve, not at all. To love takes time, you have to put a lot of hard work and effort in to build those relationships and connections with our tamariki and their whanau. But how perfect is that quote to apply to our teaching, how it describes the ingredients necessary for our concoction of principles and values that we take on our journey! We need to be patient with our tamariki, and be kind. They need to feel protected and have trust in us. We must have hope and we must persevere through those challenging times. Our love for our tamariki never fails and reading that bible verse gives me faith every day that we are doing the right thing. We are loving our tamariki for who they are. I am so proud as an educator here at Creators Waipa, can you guess what our pillar one is in our philosophy? Yup, Love and Connection.
“A child cannot thrive if they are not loved first. Authentic love of each child is at the heart of all our actions at Creators. Neuroscience tells us that the brain needs to be in a state of well-being before it can be ready for learning. The warm environment of love and genuine connection we foster at Creators enhances every child’s learning and development.” -Creators learning model.
Right there, is why I choose love over anything. I love my tamariki and will continue to love them, for love never fails.
Written with many blessings, by Miss Hannah
Creators Waipa