Children as Influencers of Change Video
A strong focus in community partnership ignited a pedagogical research focus for the educators and children at Rosie’s Early Learning. Documenting children’s perceptions of how ‘Rights’, ‘Relationships’ and ‘Citizenship’ interconnects identified powerful undertones and demonstrated the children’s knowledge in the importance of respect and diversity. This work leveraged from the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, Professor Carla Rinaldi’s (Reggio) work in South Australia on ‘Re-imagining Childhood’ and National Children’s Commissioner’s Children’s Rights Report for Australian Children by Megan Mitchell. The pedagogical approach was underpinned by rich, meaningful enquiry based intentional teaching to unpack the children’s understanding of the impact they were having within their community. This approach deepened the children’s critical thinking and ownership of their learning outcomes. Critical to engaging children in real life experiences is the genuineness of the experience and the potential outcome. To engage the children in real life citizenship the educators were determined to create an impact with children’s ideas and voice. The research focus on ‘loneliness in community’ constructed an array of ideas and strategies. This presentation will share the ‘Pen pal project’ by the 4 year old children writing to elderly and lonely people in Logan and the Loneliness animated video created by the 3 year old group to inform Logan council how loneliness in the community can be minimised. The 3 year old children were asked to presented this video and their ideas on stage at a national Change Fest conference in 2018 to have a voice in the conferences underpinning themes of how to create social change, winning the community video award for their submission. The connection with the pen pal group has been very successful with a total of 15 elderly residents participating in the program with the children.