How Well Do You Really Know Your People? A strategy for you.

Kia orana koutou katotoa, Nau mai, haere mai ki tēnei panui/karere rānei.

Welcome to Nurtured with Naketa.

This week, I want to talk about Humans of Kindergarten.

Some time ago, Brandon Stanton started the movement called Humans of New York. He basically walked around Central Park and interviewed everyday humans from New York, capturing their stories in a photojournalistic way. I want to share with you the absolute game-changing idea of bringing this concept into your spaces.

I want to start with a question first: how well do you know the people in your team?

I used to encourage teachers to draw up a little grid and write down all the names of the children in their class. I would invite you to do this for your team and write down all the things you know about them — their whānau, where they whakapapa (geneology) to, their interests, their favourite food, how they have their coffee, whatever you know about them.

That’s instant visual documentation of how well you know your people, but also how well you don’t. If you see glaring gaps in what you know about particular people, that’s a sign that you’ve got more work to do in terms of that relationship.

Back in Saudi Arabia, when I was the team lead there, and the curriculum coordinator and coach, I invited my team to capture a story. There was a group of us who documented stories we were comfortable sharing with the rest of our kindergarten. There were about thirty-two of us in the organisation in that particular grade, and I displayed the stories on a wall in our cafeteria.

It wasn’t just for those in teaching positions. We invited the cleaners, the receptionists, our principal, anybody associated with working with our children, to share a story. The most amazing moment from that whole scenario was when we learned that Kim, our cleaner, had two master’s degrees, one in business and one in theology.

Typically, you see a cleaner and think, oh, they don’t have any qualifications. Our cleaner was overqualified. But what that brought was a lovely story to connect with him on, and with our other support people, and with each other.

The story I shared in my kōrero — in my Humans of Kindergarten, as we called it — was that I actually failed School Certificate back in the day. That was your first qualification, and I failed that miserably. I also failed school miserably — not the social aspects, though!

I started as a cleaner in an early childhood centre too. The director of the centre told me, “You play with the children and I’ll clean,” because I had a natural ability for it. I did certificates to get myself into a degree, worked part-time, raised my son while studying, and can now confidently sit here and say I have a degree, two master’s degrees, and am currently doing a doctorate.

It doesn’t define you. Your history doesn’t define you. You get to rewrite your story every day you wake up. It’s so nice to hear what people want to share with you too, so I invite you, I’ve popped a link to a video where you can watch my version of Humans of Kindergarten and use that as inspiration to get to know your people.

Tēnā tātou e te whānau.

Mauri ora