What do you value as making a good educator?

What do you value as making a good educator?

I came across a post from an educator recently asking whether being a good educator depends on how good you are at art and craft. They felt that in their service, the educators who were really good at creative experiences, art and displays seemed to receive more recognition than educators whose strengths were things like supervision, managing a room, supporting challenging behaviour, interacting with children and keeping them safe.

My immediate thought was no. Of course being good at art and craft doesn’t make you a good educator. But then I kept thinking about it, because I don’t actually think this is a conversation about art and craft at all. I think the bigger question is, what do we value as making a good educator? And perhaps before we can answer that, we need to think about who we actually are as educators.

If you caught my webinar last week, you might remember an activity we did around the words “I am”. Who are you? As educators, we can get so caught up in what we do that being an educator almost becomes who we are. But I am not only an educator. I am Rachel. I am a Mum, a Wife, a TBI survivor, a business owner, a friend, a mentor, a learner and so much more. All of those parts of me have shaped the person I am, and whether I consciously realise it or not, they have also shaped the educator I have been.

So maybe we need to take that same thinking into our professional identity. Who are you as an educator? Not just what do you do or what are you good at, but what do you value? What do you believe about children? What matters to you? What is your philosophy? Because those things influence our practice far more than I think we sometimes realise.

I was visiting a service recently that was almost completely concrete and artificial grass outdoors. They had actually been trying to make some significant improvements to the environment and had started creating small garden areas over the concrete. They were putting genuine effort into it, but couldn’t work out why they were struggling to keep their plants alive.

For me, being in that environment was hard. It is so far removed from my own philosophy of what I value in children’s environments. I value nature. I value children having access to dirt, grass, plants, trees and outdoor spaces that feel alive. I know how much environment affects me, and I think sometimes we forget that when we talk about children too.

We see children having big behaviours when they have been cooped up inside or haven’t had the opportunity to move, explore or regulate in an environment that meets their needs. We consider whether they need fresh air, movement, sensory experiences or simply more space. We look at what is happening around the child and ask whether the environment might be contributing to what we are seeing.

But the same thing applies to us.

Our environment affects us. Our relationships affect us. The culture around us, the expectations placed on us, and the way we are spoken to, supported, trusted and valued all affect how we show up. Maybe sometimes what we describe as an educator who “isn’t working out” is actually an educator who isn’t working well in that environment.

There is a difference.

A child may thrive in one environment and struggle in another, and an educator can too. I know I would struggle working every day in an environment completely disconnected from some of the things I value deeply in early childhood. Another educator might walk into exactly the same service and absolutely love it. That doesn’t automatically make either of us a better educator. It means we are different people, bringing different experiences, strengths, beliefs and values with us.

I think this is where the idea of someone being a “good fit” becomes really interesting. Sometimes an educator and a service simply don’t mesh. Their philosophies may be different. Their communication styles might be different. Their expectations, approaches to children, environments, leadership or teamwork may be different. Sometimes the service isn’t right for the educator, and sometimes the educator isn’t right for the service. That doesn’t automatically make either one bad, and it certainly shouldn’t mean the educator suddenly has less value.

Maybe instead of immediately asking, “What’s wrong with this educator?”, we need to become a little more curious. What would help this educator thrive here? Is there something they need to learn? Is there mentoring they haven’t received? Is there a strength we haven’t recognised because we have been too focused on what they aren’t doing well? Is there something about the environment, culture or leadership that is making it harder for them to do their best work?

And the question has to go both ways. What does the educator bring that adds value to the service, and what does the service bring that adds value to the educator? I think they are equally important. A service needs educators, and educators need workplaces where they can contribute, learn, work and hopefully thrive. Neither becomes more valuable simply because one employs the other.

That doesn’t mean every educator will be right for every service. Sometimes the answer really will be that this isn’t the right place for someone, and that’s okay too. But “this isn’t the right environment for me” and “I am a bad educator” are two very different things, and I think we need to be incredibly careful about confusing them.

I had another experience recently that made me think about how quickly we can form a picture of an educator before we have really had the opportunity to know them. I was speaking with a service about a relatively new educator. They were considering putting her forward for a scholarship, but something wasn’t quite adding up. Some of what they were seeing in her practice didn’t match what they had been told during recruitment. They weren’t trying to find a reason to get rid of her. They wanted some clarity before they invested further in her development, so I was asked to do a little digging.

It didn’t take long to discover that some of the references provided during the recruitment process had been fabricated. A friend had been presented as someone who had managed the educator professionally. When this was raised, the educator’s response was essentially, what else was I supposed to do? How was I going to get another job after being fired from my last one?

Obviously, fabricating a reference isn’t okay. Honesty matters to me enormously, and in a profession where children, families, colleagues and services place so much trust in us, integrity matters. But what happened next is actually the most important part of this story.

She wasn’t terminated. She received the scholarship.

The service could see that there were areas of her practice that weren’t yet meeting their expectations, so they invested in her. She received additional training and development to help her build the skills she needed to meet the requirements of the service. They held her accountable for what had happened without deciding that one poor decision defined everything she could ever become.

I think there is something important in that, particularly when we look at the other side of references. I have also seen services give educators negative references because they were angry or annoyed that the educator had decided to leave. So what does a reference actually tell us? A glowing reference can be fabricated. A negative reference can come from someone carrying their own feelings about the situation. A completely genuine reference can still only tell us about that person’s experience of the educator in that particular environment, at that particular time.

References have a place. Résumés have a place. Interviews have a place. Qualifications and experience matter too. But none of them can tell us everything about the human being who is about to walk into a room with children.

I have been in early childhood education for around 20 years now and I have worked alongside a LOT of educators. Some have had years and years of experience and some have been brand new. Some have been incredible at documentation, some could create environments that looked like they belonged in a magazine, and some could plan the most amazing experiences.

Yet some of the best educators I have known wouldn’t necessarily stand out on paper at all.

They were the educators who noticed when a child wasn’t quite themselves. They noticed the child hovering around the edge of the group who wanted to join in but didn’t quite know how. They noticed when the noise was becoming too much, or when another educator was struggling and quietly stepped in. They knew the children well enough to recognise that what looked like “challenging behaviour” might actually be telling them something, and they knew when to step in and when to leave children alone.

They made children feel safe.

Most of that is incredibly difficult to put on a résumé, and it is also really hard to put on display. Art is visible. Beautiful environments are visible. Displays and documentation are visible. Families see them, leaders see them, we photograph them and share them.

Good supervision isn’t particularly exciting to photograph. Neither is the educator who notices a child becoming overwhelmed and changes what they are doing before things escalate. Or the educator who spends ten minutes helping a child feel safe enough to say goodbye to Mum. Or the educator who recognises that the children are deeply engaged and decides that, actually, they don’t need an adult coming over and turning what they are doing into an “experience”.

There is so much skill in this work that nobody really sees.

That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with being the educator who is incredible at art and craft either. Please keep that educator on my team! I just don’t want that to become the measure by which everybody else is valued.

I want the educator who loves creating, and the educator who builds incredible relationships with families. I want the educator who seems to have eyes in the back of their head when it comes to supervision and the one who understands behaviour and wants to know what might be happening underneath it. I want the educator who loves being outside getting dirty with the children, and the one who will question something we have done for ten years and ask why.

I want experienced educators with years of knowledge to share, and I want brand-new educators who bring fresh eyes and ask a million questions. I also want educators who can say, “I don’t know”, “Can you show me?” and “I got that wrong”, because none of us walk into this profession as a finished product.

After around 20 years, I’m certainly still not one.

Our experiences change us. The children we work with and the educators we work alongside change us. Our knowledge grows. Research changes. Sometimes someone challenges something we have believed for years and we realise we need to think about it differently. That isn’t a weakness in an educator. That is learning.

So perhaps when we ask what makes a good educator, we need to look beyond what they can produce and what somebody else has written about them. We need to understand the person. What do they value? What do they believe about children? What does their philosophy look like when nobody is asking them to write one for an assessment or a service document? Most importantly, how do those beliefs actually show up in their practice?

Can they reflect and accept feedback? Can they recognise when their own values or experiences are influencing the way they see somebody else’s practice? Are they willing to keep learning? Are they working in an environment where those strengths are recognised and where they have the opportunity to grow?

There are two questions I keep coming back to through all of this.

What does it actually feel like to be a child in that educator’s care?

And…

What does it feel like to be that educator in that service?

I think we need to understand both.

So I want to throw this conversation open. Who are you as an educator? What do you value? What has shaped the way you see children and your role alongside them? What strengths do you bring that might never appear on your résumé? And what do you need from a service to be able to do your best work?

If you are leading a service, there is another side to that reflection too. What do you value in the educators around you? Are there strengths within your team that you haven’t really noticed because they aren’t the ones that produce something visible? And are you creating an environment where different kinds of good educators can actually thrive?

Maybe the question isn’t simply, “What makes a good educator?”

Maybe we also need to ask, “What helps a good educator thrive?”

What is your personal philosophy?

This is actually something we are going to explore more deeply inside The Educators Well.

On 1 October, a new Put It Into Practice activity, What Is Your Personal Philosophy?, will be released for Educator Members.

And I don’t want this to be another activity where you write a beautiful philosophy because you think it sounds like what an educator is supposed to say.

I want you to actually think about it.

Who are you as an educator? What do you genuinely value? What experiences have shaped those values? What do you believe about children, learning, relationships, environments and your role? Where do those beliefs show up in your practice? And are there places where what you say you value and what you actually do don’t quite match yet?

There isn’t necessarily something wrong with discovering that either.

That’s reflection.

And perhaps understanding who you are as an educator is one of the most important places to start when we’re trying to answer what being a good educator actually means.