A Heart Opening Journey
Sarah McManus
Are You Ready?
“Sarah, are you ready? Take a deep breath. You’re doing this.”
The exact words I spoke to myself after receiving the news that I was offered a spot as a 12th Cohort Fellow in the Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program.
The exact words I spoke to myself after receiving the news that I was offered a spot as a 12th Cohort Fellow in the Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program.
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I was no stranger to this question. My parents looking at me, the youngest of three siblings, a socially eager, extroverted child who was beyond excited to start Kindergarten a year early, “Sarah are you ready?” Choosing to leave the safety and comfort of my family home at the age of 16 to study abroad in Ireland to get to know my cultural roots, “Sarah, are you ready?” |
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Preparing to jump out of a plane with nothing but a parachute on my back, “Sarah, are you ready?” Moving across the country to Colorado to a new, unfamiliar place, “Sarah, are you ready?” |
Trust the Process
Trust. How do you ready yourself for an experience that others guarantee will change you? Like all the other moments I’ve been faced with this question, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and imagined. Imagined that feeling I had when I confidently stepped into my kindergarten classroom without a backwards glance, that feeling when I crossed the ocean to Ireland into the unknown, that feeling when I free fell from a plane, that feeling when I saw the Rocky Mountains bloom on the horizon on my road trip to move across the country. For anyone who has been fortunate enough to feel it, it is a feeling that impossibly encompasses your entire body and soul. It is a feeling we must trust with our entire being.
Equity: Owning My Privilege
This past year, I have been challenged to look at myself in the mirror in ways I never have had to before and unearth truths about my privileged place in this world. How do you describe the experience of peeling away an outer layer of yourself? Removing the armor I’ve unintentionally built in order to learn to be vulnerable, to ask real questions, and to admit I do not have the answers.
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Pause. Don’t rush this. Allow myself to question my own assumptions. Recognize some of those assumptions for what they are: my own implicit bias. Allow myself to deconstruct everything I think I know about myself and the world around me. Begin to reconstruct. Acknowledge how our society and systems within it have set certain people up to fail due to the color of their skin, the language they speak, the beliefs they hold, their economic status, the ability of their bodies, or the identities they feel deep in their bones of who they truly are. What happens when who we truly are doesn’t align with what society dictates we should be? What happens when who we truly are is not valued the same? These questions have shaped this battle that has marched along the timelines of history long before I got here. But now, push myself, a privileged, white, able bodied, cisgender woman to acknowledge my place in this world I was born into.
Pause. Don’t rush this. Allow myself to question my own assumptions. Recognize some of those assumptions for what they are: my own implicit bias. Allow myself to deconstruct everything I think I know about myself and the world around me. Begin to reconstruct. Acknowledge how our society and systems within it have set certain people up to fail due to the color of their skin, the language they speak, the beliefs they hold, their economic status, the ability of their bodies, or the identities they feel deep in their bones of who they truly are. What happens when who we truly are doesn’t align with what society dictates we should be? What happens when who we truly are is not valued the same? These questions have shaped this battle that has marched along the timelines of history long before I got here. But now, push myself, a privileged, white, able bodied, cisgender woman to acknowledge my place in this world I was born into.
To be thankful for being born to two parents who have raised me to know empathy, to be grateful, and to value the differences that make each of us who we are. To acknowledge this is not a space for white guilt, but instead take ownership that I can be part of the movement for change. I am not too small, I am not too quiet. I can be a voice that will be made stronger in unison with others that demand this change. To co-create the better future we envision, to celebrate every human brought into this world without agenda, judgement, or oppression.
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My Leader Within
Leadership. What did this word mean to me before? What does it mean to me now? Before, words like “boss”, “manager”, “supervisor”, and “control” came to mind. And now? Words like, “appreciation”, “ask”, “listen”, and “wonder” float to the surface. Appreciative Leadership has been the catalyst of my metamorphosis, driven by a force I’ve always relied on in challenging times: the ultimate power of positivity. Finding humor in the darkness, learning to laugh at myself, inviting others to laugh with me. These are tools that I have honed throughout my life, stumbling hard along the way, but tools that have led me to trust in Rule #6 from The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone and Benjamin Zander: “Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously”.
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The Value of Play
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Which brings me to my deepened understanding of play. Play, a word I thought was simple, has become the heartbeat of my call to action: to stand up for every child’s right to play. Heading into this journey, it was easy for me to assume everyone recognized play for what it is - not only a crucial foundation of the childhood experience but also, according to the International Play Association, “a means to learning to live, not a mere passing of time”. The place I am standing now in my journey is to use my voice to ensure every child has the opportunities to learn to live through play, no matter their place in this world.
With the ever increasing focus on testing and rigorous academic standards set for today’s students, I recognize society’s indifference to the value of play. In order to battle this indifference, I have opened myself up to the real work to be done. To fight for equity, for inclusion, for the value of play, and that play is a fundamental human right for every child. I am a leader who must demand, protect and advocate for the right of every child to dream, to imagine, to laugh. For every child to play.
Is play a privilege afforded to only some of us? Are our education systems teaching us out of our own innate capacities to be curious and playful? Is play taken away from children as a form of punishment? How can our organizations unite to advocate for the value of play? Questions began to form and swirl for me and my small action research group as we set out to engage in the Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR) phase of our journey. We were on the cusp of asking how we cross organizational lines and unite together to call out inequities, fight for inclusion and demand the right for every child to play. The goosebumps erupting upon my flesh from these questions indicated to my soul’s compass that I was heading towards true north of my purpose in this work.
Is play a privilege afforded to only some of us? Are our education systems teaching us out of our own innate capacities to be curious and playful? Is play taken away from children as a form of punishment? How can our organizations unite to advocate for the value of play? Questions began to form and swirl for me and my small action research group as we set out to engage in the Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR) phase of our journey. We were on the cusp of asking how we cross organizational lines and unite together to call out inequities, fight for inclusion and demand the right for every child to play. The goosebumps erupting upon my flesh from these questions indicated to my soul’s compass that I was heading towards true north of my purpose in this work.
COVID-19: A Global Pandemic
And then the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020 barreled towards us at a relentless speed. And we were again invited to trust the process. New questions formed in my mind. How can play be valued as a basic need for a child when their sources for food, shelter and safety might be in jeopardy? How can I advocate for the value of play for every child when the world they know has been ripped away from them? And for us on this journey, gone were the joyful Friday evening classes where we could join together to laugh, to cry, to confide in one another, to share a meal, and to support each other in ways none of us could have anticipated when we first met as strangers nearly one year ago.
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Together We Co-create |
And yet, together, we have carried on in ways we could not have done alone. We have forged our way ahead digitally, taking comfort in the little squares of our faces that fill our computer screens on a Zoom call. Living through social distancing, quarantine and isolation from one another, we have carried on with new challenges and new questions. We know that surviving quarantine has been a simple inconvenience for some, whereas it’s been a life upending trauma for others. These are systemic, inequitable challenges I believe we are better prepared to face than if we had not undergone our leadership transformations of this past year together. We have the chance of a lifetime to recognize this pandemic for what it could be in the hands of leaders like us: a catalyst for change. Our call to action. A chance to bring to the surface and into the spotlight the narrative of inequities that surround us. Inequities that have only become more glaringly evident as we navigate this pandemic. A chance to bring our world out the other side of this a better place.
Now What?
Unsurprisingly, I approach the end of this journey with more questions than answers. However, these questions are grounded in the experiences we’ve shared together. Questions that inspire action. Questions that have the power to breathe sense into the chaos. It is our time to activate our open minds, capitalize our open wills to trailblaze the way forward, and to bear our open hearts to the world around us.
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As we look to what lies ahead for each of us in the field of Early Childhood, I foresee journeys that will spiderweb out in an infinite number of directions, each unique path blazed by the brilliant leadership of these eighteen wise and wonderful women. As we prepare to take our next steps, I ask each of us, “12th Cohort Fellows, are you ready?”
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