Thinking back: How childhood memories affect teachers 

Amy Found said she remembers reading with kindergarten children from Grade 4 to Grade 6. She said it was her favourite thing to do. Her elementary school, Briargreen Public School in Ottawa, offered a program called reading buddies where older students were paired with younger ones to read together. 

It was programs like reading buddies and working with children at summer camps that Found said motivated her to become an educator. Found just finished her first year in early childhood education at Algonquin College.

A new research study examining how childhood memories influence future educators who are preparing to work with children found her personal connection to teaching was not uncommon. 

In 2016, the researchers of the new study looked into different aspects of childhood for a journal called the Curriculum Inquiry. According to Lisa Farley, a researcher and education professor at York University, the research team was interested in investigating how children are represented in classrooms and curriculum. This area of focus led them to research how teachers’ understanding of childhood might be affected by their own childhood memories. 

The study had research assistants at four post-secondary institutions—Carleton University, York University, Concordia University and Hunter College. They asked students in teacher education and childhood studies programs to reflect on their childhood memories and to connect those memories with their motivations to work with children, said Julie Garlen, a youth and childhood professor at Carleton and researcher from the study.  

Garlen said there is not enough space for teachers to reflect on how their identities and childhood memories impact their work with the children they teach. 

“It would be important for [children’s teachers] to engage in some reflective work about how their understanding of childhood is shaped by their own experiences,” Garlen said.

Reflecting on then and now

Brandon Tobin, a recent graduate from the youth and childhood studies program at Carleton, is one of the teachers who has reflected on his childhood teaching influences. Tobin said having a kind and inspirational Grade 11 teacher pushed him to pursue a career in teaching. He is now going into his second year of teacher education at the University of Ottawa. 

“If I was inspired by one individual, imagine what I could do as an educator—inspiring numerous other individuals coming through that classroom each and every day,” Tobin said. 

As an educator herself, Garlen also reflected on a childhood memory that played a role in her current research on critical childhood studies. When Garlen was only three years old, she and her family were getting ready to move into a new house. 

“I just really clearly remember this desire to help paint the house, and my parents said I was too little,” she said.

This memory influenced her to focus her work on advocating for children to be seen as “knowing and capable actors who have something to offer the world, and human beings we can learn from and engage with,” Garlen said. 

Garlen has been an advocate of social justice for children and has worked on how children’s popular culture, such as Disney, shapes the way people understand themselves and others. Most recently, she has advocated for recognizing children’s rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Teaching is about building relationships with individual students as a way to meet their specific needs, Tobin said. His high school experience taught him it is important to listen to students and ensure their voices are heard and respected.

“Every student should be deserving of having that experience within the education system in terms of being motivated to be the best versions of themselves and knowing that [they’re] supported throughout [their] journey,” Tobin said.

The research study found participants who had a positive experience as a child wish to create a similar environment in their future classrooms.

Not all sunshine and rainbows 

Positive childhood memories are not the only experiences that influence teaching. Found said her negative experiences at school also shaped her into the kind of teacher she wants to become. 

Since elementary school, Found said she felt the pressure to excel at everything which led her to have panic attacks in class. In Grade 8, she was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.

“I think school really, even in the earlier years like elementary, kind of pushed [the] mentality of like perfectionism on me that stayed with me through middle school and high school,” Found said. 

During high school, Found said she unlearned this mentality and accepted herself as someone who cannot do everything. 

Found said she wants to create a healthier environment for children by creating a classroom space that is accepting of mistakes. 

“I want them to feel comfortable and for school [to be] a place where they can learn and explore with the safety and comfort of not having to be right, or be entirely perfect all the time,” Found said. 

She said she is hoping to work in daycare or with associations that help students with special needs such as Children’s Inclusion Support Services.

The relevance of intersectionality

According to the research study, both positive and negative childhood memories are connected to systemic inequities such as racism, sexism, classism and ableism. 

Participants with negative childhood experiences reflected on how their school structures disadvantaged racialized, differently-abled and middle-class children. Those with positive experiences did not make those connections.

Farley said the participants used personality traits such as being shy or friendly to describe themselves as children. When some of them had to recall specific childhood memories, they referenced their social identities such as race, gender and class. 

“We did notice that when it was mentioned, race, gender and class and so on, it tended to be in situations where things were difficult and where schools were not accommodating,” Farley said.

Farley added children who do not realize how their negative school experiences are linked to the inequitable structures in place may associate negative memories as personal failures. 

“If you can link [negative memories] to social structure, you can recognize that certain systems set up particular kids to have a harder time in certain ways,” she said.

The study was meant to question how existing social structures, such as race, gender and class, might have led someone to have a positive or negative experience. But according to Garlen, the findings do not suggest that thinking critically about childhood memories will help dismantle systemic inequities in education. 

Teachers tend to project their own experiences upon their students and assume every child shares those experiences, Garlen said.

“[The research allows us to] reflect on how we can step away from [preconceptions] and maybe take a closer look at who our students are telling us they are, rather than who we assume them to be based on our own experiences,” Garlen said.

Paving a better path for future students

If future educators analyze the impact of social structures on their experiences, it can help them recognize and challenge the inequities their students might face, Farley said. 

One educator working to bring social structures to light in the classroom is Kareena Butler, the Indigenous education itinerant teacher at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB). Butler is Algonquin and of European ancestry.

She works with educators to support learning programs specific to First Nations, Métis and Inuit students from kindergarten to Grade 8. Butler aims to integrate Indigenous perspectives into curriculums, provide resources for Indigenous students to succeed and create inclusive school spaces for students, their communities and cultures. 

“When you think of schools, it’s really a colonial structure that was meant to assimilate us into valuing one knowledge system over others,” Butler said. “I think now we are in that time where we’re inclusive and we are valuing other knowledge systems like Indigenous knowledge systems.”

Butler grew up in Mattawa, a town on Algonquin land in northeastern Ontario. Mattawa means “meeting of the waters” in the Algonquin language. 

Growing up, Butler said she was ashamed of her heritage because of how Indigenous peoples were portrayed in her school’s curriculum. 

“I think having that opportunity where kids are proud of who they are and where they come from, and providing them that space to figure out where they’re going is so important,” Butler said.

Butler said she also finds healing in her work. 

“When I think of racialized youth in general, they’re finding their voice, and I’m so proud of them because they’re taking the stand, they’re doing that advocacy, that social justice work, they’re educating educators as well,” she said. 

Committed to doing the work

Tobin said his background in childhood studies prepared him to think critically about social structures and gave him the skills to implement changes that can better facilitate every child’s educational experience. 

“[Being an educator] is being a continuous learner,” he said. “It’s about being able to reflect at the end of each day—what could I have done better on, what do I need to improve on—and being able to actually merge that into the classroom setting.”

Found said she learned from her studies that it is important to collaborate with other educators with diverse social and cultural perspectives and learn from them.

“Every child is different so to create that kind of space, you need to be able to learn about other people’s point of views,” she said.

She referred to a 2014 learning resource used in the early childhood program at Algonquin entitled How Does Learning Happen? The resource highlights the importance of establishing positive and engaging relationships with children and their families.

“If you talk to the family you figure out more history about the children themselves as well as the family—what they do at home, what they’re interested in,” Found said. “Things like that can help.” 

Butler said her work helping educators implement changes to their teaching practices and methods in classrooms is far from over, but the progress is worth the time. 

“I know I want change to happen really fast, but I know change doesn’t happen fast. So, my commitment is to stay the course and stay strong,” she said.

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Featured image by NeONBRAND via Unsplash.