It Takes A Village.....

It takes a village to ....

"raise a child."  Let me add to that statement, "and educate a child." The days of sending your child to school to be returned to you with the knowledge and skills to become successful adults are long gone. Learning does not occur only during the hours of 7:45 and 3:30. It is continuous. Therefore, the village has to be prepared and committed to invest in the wonderful human resources we are so privileged encounter. Learning is continuous and there are so many aspects we have to develop. Children require emotional, social, intellectual, and kinesthetic stimulation and development. Which means, we have to build their knowledge about subject matters, teach them how to behave and interact with others, and how to be mobile beings.

Who is the "Village?"
The village is the parents, teachers, administrators, custodians, bus drivers, extended family, business owners, and community members. No individual teacher can prepare students to survive in the world within the walls of a classroom. Parents are a child's first teachers, followed by family members, and community members. Children do not encounter teachers until they are 4 or 5 years of age after they have learned how to walk, speak, interact with peers and adults.

What are we teaching?
Each of village members teaches children something different. Sometimes you are not even aware that you are teaching.  Foundations are set in certain areas of the village and have to be supported by others. Intellectual development is a foundation I see set in schools, but parents and business owners (at different stages) have to provide support for that development. Social interactions, while it occurs at school, is a foundation set in home environments. Each aspect of child development has to be supported for our children to receive the tools they need to become productive adults.

Village Commitments
Educating children is not always a choice. We teach by the way we live. They observe our actions, reactions, and responses in different environments and circumstances. Children then emulate what they see. If you want to impact the lives of children, you have to commit to..

• developing trust and building relationships with village members.
• living life as if children are mirroring us.
• allowing others to provide guidance and correction to our children. We often, as parents, don't want others correcting our children. I struggled with this myself because I felt some people in the village were not being fair in their correction. Meaning you correct some children and not others or you correct mine and not yours for the same things. But here again, we are still teaching them a lesson in those moments.
• supporting the efforts of the village.
• respecting other members' cultures. We can be a part of different villages (social, religious, educational, etc.). Therefore, educators need to respect cultural villages that students come from and parents have to respect the cultural environment of the school their child attends. 

Like it or not, we are all contributing members of one village or another. What we do or fail to do; say or fail to say teaches lessons to children who are always watching.