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Neville is the Director at community-based service, the Dorothy Waide Centre for Early Learning, Griffith NSW and the President of Country Children's Services. He is also the recent winner of the National Excellence in Teaching Award.
What drew you to the area of early childhood?
I come from a small community 70 km out of Griffith. I grew up on a farm and went to school just down the road at a one-teacher, 11-student school. I never got to attend preschool, but I did grow up in a caring, tolerant and extraordinary community.
I trained as a primary school teacher, and in 1981, when I completed my training, there were few jobs for teachers—certainly not like today. During my training I had opted to undertake a stream of early childhood subjects and really enjoyed the connection I could make with younger children. My first paying job after college was with the Griffith Mobile Resource Unit. This was a mobile service that worked out of Griffith, providing a range of unfocused children’s programs in Hillston, Rankins Springs, Darlington Point and Yamma. Its primary focus seemed to be working with adults. The parents wanted something different and we refocused on children and depending on the community, the service provided preschool to playgroup sessions. We still did adult education, but both services now were equal.
I stayed with the Mobile for five years. We had added Whitton, Weethalle, Goolgowi to our timetable, and developed a ‘playgroup in a box’ for centres we would only visit once a month. We had also run sessions in caravan parks, housing estates and also established the Griffith Early Intervention Itinerant Project and a Respite Care service.
So why did I stay with the young kids? The buzz. It was and still is chaos. It is just the best high you could ever get: the constant surprise, the delight of young smiles and the immediacy of what we can do and achieve.
Name one of the most memorable experiences you’ve had, whilst being in the early childhood sector?
There are too many, but I think the thing that gets me is the incredible trust that parents place in us each day. To hand over this most precious person to the care of strangers—to trust that they will love them, care for them, nurture them, instil a sense of wonder and delight, awaken a desire to learn—gets me every time. It is what drives me to ensure that what I do and what my team does, acknowledges the gift that families give our society and our world.
I like the fact that what we do is appreciated within our community and indeed across many communities. Earlier this year, I received a National Excellence in Teaching Award, which recognised my contribution to early childhood. I accepted this on behalf of my team and the parents and community I work for. It isn’t any one person, it’s a shared journey. I get the greatest joy out of sharing the journey of children with people, the opportunities to create a difference.
What are the issues you’re most passionate about right now?
How I can make stronger connections with families. I think this is the key to societal change and how we can protect children, families and ultimately our communities. At our service, there is a strong focus on family and how we can connect and support them—not just with child care, but about the parenting role they have fallen into.
I think our society has changed significantly and that parenting isn’t embedded at birth, it is learned. Mostly from our own parents, and those around us. But too many families are dislocated from family and indeed, friends. Early childhood is in the perfect location to reconnect and share the responsibility of parenting. This is one of the key components of the NSW Curriculum Framework The Practice of Relationships, a document which inspires me to do better each and every day.
There is a strong movement within government to also do better on how it supports family and the benefits this has on the family, the child and society. They have finally cottoned-on to the notion that early childhood is quite important.
I also have a strong belief that we, early childhood practitioners, need to do it better. There is an incredible amount of inconsistency in what we offer families and children. This is about the type of services we offer, the quality of the curriculum, how we connect with children and how we view ourselves. I am increasingly concerned that early childhood is locking itself into service types and ignoring the changing nature of family and their needs and indeed the needs of community. I have been criticised for this recently, but am prepared to argue that every early childhood service has a responsibility to the families, children and community it serves—not just the staff who can be quite comfortable in the traditional role they have played.
What inspires you about early childhood?
The incredible diversity of what we do across the country. Every service is different, even those that operate under the big commercial enterprises still have difference. The difference is the people who work in the service, the families, the children and the community. You can’t create a ‘one model fits all’ service.
What really inspires me are the babies—I work primarily with children under two years—13 children and a team of five adults. I am on the floor from 8 am through till 2 pm, and I am the director of a 73-place service! Kids under two years are chaos (the best kind), and young children astound me with how quickly they change and grow. How they play—together, in the same game, reacting to each other—stuns me each day.
In your own childhood, what was your most magical experience?
When I was a kid at school we went on an excursion to Griffith, which was a huge day out because the road wasn’t fully sealed. We went to see a puppet show, The Tintookies. There were amazing marionettes filled with Australian animals and characters, it was awesome and just took me away. One of my early experiences with theatre!
When it comes to the education of Australian children, particularly in the early years, what do you think children most need, and what would you like to see more of?
Children need to be trusted, and have opportunities to be creative, resourceful, capable and resilient. I think there is a great big ‘dumb down’ happening at the moment, everything is being made too easy, so that everyone succeeds.
Children are born to learn. Our role is to support, nurture and instil a sense of enquiry and desire to learn in young children, but also to support and nurture their family and ultimately the community. To be flexible in the services we provide, catering for the needs of each community as they arise and how these programs are delivered.
I don’t know how that can happen when children and their educators are being snowed under with misinformation about children, how they learn and what they need. The stencil is the teacher’s audit trail, proving to someone higher up that the children have completed a task, never quite sure if they understand the process. The focus on product is disconcerting, especially as we (early childhood practitioners) know that process is the key to understanding.
Who are, or have been, the most influential people in your career?
I am here because of the giants in my life:
- the people who inspire me each day—my family, and the communities I grew up in;
- the professionals who work in early childhood services across the country, who each day create wonder and inspire children to learn, question and build knowledge;
- the families who come back year after year; and
- the children who light up my life.
I am here because I am passionate about creating the best environment for young children to grow up in—not only physically, but also emotionally and socially. I succeed because the people around me are passionate about this too.
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