From the Director
June 2023
Hello friends, family, colleagues, and collaborators!
If you know me well, you have surely heard me share my favorite line about good teaching, found in the library stacks at Bank Street College in one of Susan Isaacs’ wonderful books that details a radically democratic preschool. Isaacs determines the most important quality in any teacher: the ability to be helped. The great Stacey Abrams speaks of a similar trait in Leading From The Outside. “Effective leaders must be truth seekers and that requires a willingness to understand truths other than our own.” When a teacher or leader (Aren’t they one and the same?) enters the room, be it a classroom or a board room, they must be prepared to incorporate the truths and help of their colleagues, whether they are two or fifty-two, if they are interested in creating effective, positive change. “Can you be helped?” I ask the people I work with.
Fortunately, I can. Which has everything to do with the fact that New Village made it to our twelve-year-old birthday in August! Throughout this letter, you will find bold print and blue links marking some of the many, many teacher/leaders and leader/teachers that have helped make New Village what it is today: a new kind of village centered around early childhood education and care.
Can you believe it?! Twelve years! And our tween look is hardly recognizable when compared to our first wobbly steps in 2011. As New Village grows and matures, I find myself growing up too. I am finally beginning to realize my place as a leader and am delighted to announce that people like me - neurodivergent, empathic, messy, slow - can lead! My favorite teacher of 2021, Báyò Akómoláfé, has encouraged this discovery. He calls leadership the “holding of a shared yearning, a communal honoring of an interesting prospect and its changing shapes – rather than the predatory, often manipulative control of outcomes and people.” You want me to hold a shared yearning?! I think I can do that!
But what are we yearning for at New Village?
My initial thought is the visceral want I felt in the room when we held our first Community Engagement Night for parents, teachers, and caregivers back in 2014. Farm Hands teachers Jack Pierson and Erin Scanlon led the team that determined two of our core values:
The grownups who are raising children - at home and at school - need more time and space together to have important and difficult conversations. We are, after all, bringing up the next generation of humans!!! Drop-off and pick-up small talk just won’t suffice.
A group of people with a common goal - in this case raising children who care - must practice joy intentionally with one another if they want to build authentic, lasting relationships.
When we opened the doors on that October evening, piled snacks and drinks in our laps, and gathered in a circle of tiny chairs for “Gender 101”, there was a collective sigh and a buzz of excitement all at once. Adults, in a room, close together, talking about matters of the heart and soul?! Yes please! We yearn for connection, support, and belonging.
Then there is the search for something different than the status quo for our children. Families find New Village when they are searching for an atypical level of respect for the child and their most important work: play. Lots of outside time and real jobs with real tools add to the appeal, as well as an ever-evolving quest that teacher Suzanne Stillinger names so eloquently: "As children, many of us learned harmful ways of thinking about ourselves, our community, and our spaces. The -isms are taught, in the conversations we have, and the ones we don’t. At New Village we are committed to avoiding teaching that reinforces those harmful systems. We don’t want to teach anything that children will have to unlearn." We yearn for a place where our children can build meaningful relationships with all kinds of humans, animals, and the natural world while growing into their truest, most authentic selves.
And then there is the bigger picture to consider, which gets harder to grasp by the hour. We hear daily news of extinction rates, incarceration rates, corporate greed, hate crimes, voter suppression, and just last week, tornadoes across Kentucky. BUT WHAT DO WE DO? At New Village, we believe that every family should have the opportunity to be part of a community that:
Takes social responsibility seriously.
Makes different choices, financial and otherwise, than our “leaders”.
Listens to individual needs.
Acts on behalf of those needs.
We yearn for a different way of being human together.
Another teacher/leader I admire, Valerie Kaur, speaks boldly about the transition we are going through, as a planet, a nation, and a species. “The contractions are coming fast, the crises come wave after wave, there’s barely time to breathe, it feels like dying, and yet, is this the darkness that precedes the birth of new life? Is this the womb or the tomb?” “Sound government is necessary - but it’s not enough to create a society where we are all free. This work belongs to us, the people.”
New Village takes Kaur’s call to action seriously. We believe that slowing down, turning inwards, and deepening our relationships with one another in community is the way forward. We believe that small humans and small communities can make big change. We want more children and families and teachers to be able to access an early childhood learning community that is not rooted in scarcity, fear, and isolation, but that grows out of generosity, reciprocity, and belonging. Because there is enough. We in Western Massachusetts and in the larger society and world collectively have enough. But we need teachers and leaders to connect, communicate, collaborate, and organize so we can distribute resources equitably. We have the power to do that together.
Thank you to everyone reading this for your continued support, in whatever form that may take.
Love,
Alya and New Village