I have a new favourite day of the year (well maybe second-favourite day after Father’s Day, which, as I explain to my children but to my wife’s strong disagreement - is the most important day of the year) It’s not my birthday or even Christmas… it’s tiney INSET Day!
It’s my second-favourite day of the year because of the community we’re building together of wonderful, dedicated early years educators. In my previous job I helped to build a (now global) movement of over 20,000 Teach First teachers who are dedicated to a common mission of ensuring no child’s educational success is limited by their socioeconomic background. We now know that early years is the single most important part of children’s educational development meaning that the work you are doing will have a bigger impact on little ones’ futures than almost any other adult outside of their own family. So, tiney’s vision to unlock the potential of every child is even more important.
I found it so inspiring to see so many tiney childminders together in one venue - focused on how to be even better educators and leaders to the little ones in your care. I enjoyed my conversations with many of you at the event. There were some wonderful stories I heard of how tiney has helped you start and run successful businesses and improve your work with children and their parents. There was also some great constructive feedback on how tiney can improve and support you even better with the new funded hours and in other areas of your businesses. We are listening and continuing to make improvements, some of which you’ve hopefully already seen and with lots more to come!
We are working together to build a unique community of early years educators, using technology, mutual support and high levels of quality and impact for our children. This is incredibly difficult (especially at a time when early years funding is going through a once-in-a-generation change and we are working with over 150 Local Authorities who all like to operate differently), but also incredibly important. We know that childminding can often be lonely and very difficult and I hope that the tiney community that we are building can help.
During the Inset day I showed this video of a guy who had his own mission (to have fun dancing at a festival) and was ‘unstoppable’ in building a community of people who worked with him towards his mission. I’m not sure he was the best dancer I’ve ever seen, but more importantly he thought he was! Whilst this example is much more frivolous than what you are doing, I thought there were some useful lessons there:
- Focus on your vision for your children, your business and what you are building, even if you sometimes you seem a bit outside normal expectations in the early stages
- Be welcoming of others who join you, as together we are stronger than individually,(he welcomed the second and third dancer to the party, letting them do their own moves)
- Learn from each other (you can see the early dancers copy each other's moves and learn new ways to ‘express themselves’)
- Over time, the community will get bigger and bigger with more people supporting each other, so that the first group no longer looks strange!
- Sometimes you just have to dance like no one is watching and enjoy yourselves (a lesson I imagine many of your children already know!)
The recent Inset day was such a great experience that you’ll be pleased to know we are hoping to double the number of days next year and potentially host one outside of London so that our colleagues further North find it easier to attend.
Thank you for being part of such an exciting community with such an important mission and I look forward to hearing from more of you in the coming weeks and months.
