A conversation with Jamel Carly

Jamel Carly has been working as an early years educator, consultant and aspiring children’s author for nearly 20 years, including working in youth clubs, schools and as a mentor to many and supporting children with special educational needs and disability. As one of the few black men working in early years, I wanted to explore how that felt for him and for the children Lisa

What led you into working in early years, where does that passion come from?

Jamel

It started off with me working in youth work and then my mentor at the time told me to go and get my qualification. When I’d completed that qualification, I had four placements: nursery, primary school, a school youth club and elderly home. Once I had worked in the nursery, I just didn’t look back. I enjoyed myself so much that I just stayed and I’ve now been working in the early years for nearly 19 years.37

Lisa

That might seem to some as quite a leap to go from working in youth work and then going into early years. Just tell me a little bit about that journey.

Jamel

What people need to understand is that the early years and youth work is connected. The early years is the foundation stage to all learning and support. So, for me to go into the early years and working with younger children, the base of all interaction with young people is down to connection, is down to forming those positive relationships, and that’s what it’s about.

Lisa

Tell me a bit more about the vision because you just started to really talk about early years there as forming and shaping the future person that that child is going to become. Talk to me a little bit more about that so that I can make sure I can add in what your vision is about working with the early years. What’s your vision about the adult that that child can become?

Jamel

Basically, when you’re working in youth clubs you see the end result of the lack of early years nurturing, and you can also see where there are children that have been through nursery and the impact that it has. There are a lot of people who can’t afford to put their children in nurseries, and I’ve seen the devastating effect of that. Getting into early years has given me a wide scope of the journey that each child goes through, through the education system.

From nursery to reception, to going through the key stage one, two and three, because the children that I was working with at the time, some of them were in primary school and a lot of them were in secondary school as well. Working in the early years really just helped to 38shape my practice because even when I was working in early years I was still doing mentoring with children that were 13 or 14, children with different needs.

Lisa

You were working at the same time as you were doing early years work, you were also doing youth work at the same time? That’s a really helpful and broad spectrum, isn’t it?

Jamel

Yes, it is. When you learn all about the early years, you can really develop more when dealing with the older children because you really look at the whole issue, especially when it comes to managing behaviour and to supporting learning needs. You really understand the baby steps that you have to take to bring about a positive result. There’s never just an end result or a child is never just the ideal package, they can never just get everything right. No, we take steps.

For instance, a child learning to walk. We know that it starts off with the development of the muscles in their neck, being able to raise up their neck, to eventually being able to develop their upper body strength and their lower body strength, then eventually they start grasping, they start reaching, then they start standing, and so on until they take their first steps. I always use that approach in everything I do, even with the older children.

Lisa

I like that framework, I like that analogy, and I like how much you’re smiling when talking about that process. It’s really nice. I can see the light in your eyes when you’re thinking about a child taking those steps, and the process to stand up, the process to walk.

Jamel

It’s amazing because when you really see a child thrive, you just know that the job that you’re doing, you’re doing 39it right. You know what I mean? You’re making a difference in the world, and that’s what just kept me in the early years, because those results, just being able to help and nurture and build up the next generation.

Lisa

Can we talk about that in the context of social injustices? Systems tend to work with the idea that humans are individuals which can lead people to forget that those ‘individuals’ are living in communities with all sorts of other social structures that make things really complicated and really difficult, whether that’s poor housing, whether that’s racism, whether that’s poverty. I wondered what your thoughts were around that? As a black male working in the early years you will bring a different perspective to your work than most of the workforce, would you say?

Jamel

Yes. So the figure of males that make up the early years workforce is 3% and I figure that something like 0.3% of males in the early years workforce are black. This is why I am a ‘Men in the Early Years Ambassador’ as well.

When you get to know individual children, you realise that children are just that. They’re just children, but there are economic social factors that affect each child and the help and support that they receive, and also the understanding varies as well. For instance, I’ve worked in grass roots areas locally in nurseries, and I’ve also worked in very well-known, well-funded establishments as well. Obviously, the basis is that children are children, but a lot of nurseries highlight that the provisions are very, very different in terms of equipment, in terms of care, in terms of the staff that they’ve got in as well.

There’s a difference, and each one of these children, especially the ones in lower income families, they each 40have their own narrative, basically is what I’m trying to say. And there is a big difference. A lot of these families, such as those from lower income families, can’t afford to pay for childcare so a lot of the children will be doing half days or might do three days or two days in the week. Where there are families where they’ve got a higher income, they can afford full care, full days and they’re paying it straight without any of the childcare funding and so on.

A lot of the time you can see that the breakup of the week where the child, especially the child from the low-income family, is only able to go to nursery maybe two days or three days and this affects their learning because they’re not able to settle in, and they’re having to constantly be making that transition from being at home, being comfortable in their surroundings, and being around faces that they’re used to, to then being uprooted and taken to nursery. That in itself can disrupt the whole learning experience because from drop-off you’re having to settle the child, reassure them that they’re okay, and then by the time you blink, their hours have gone and they’re having to be collected.

That’s a perspective that a lot of people, if you’re not on the ground, wouldn’t really know about or take on board. And then you can see the rippling effect that this has when that child then goes to primary school because you’ve come from being in, out, to then being slapped down in the school and that child is having to do a full week. That affects the transition, and that affects their whole learning experience.

Lisa

What kind of role do you think that – I’m asking this question particularly of early years, I think there’s always a role, but for early years because it is really about prevention – what kind of role do you think early years has 41in eliminating some of the social injustices? Maybe eliminating is a strong word.

Jamel

I feel that early years plays a big role. For instance, the dynamic of the early years is, it should be centred around the child. Our practice should be centred around the child, the provisions should be centred around the child, and I think when you create an environment that mimics or mirrors society then the child is able to settle in easier because it’s something that’s familiar to them. I think it’s our responsibility to create an environment that even if it’s not familiar to the child, that we’re introducing concepts of the wider community as well, so they can find those attachments and build the necessary scaffolding that will help them later on in life.

I think that’s the most important thing and also supporting those families as well so that when their child is not at nursery, they’re able to then keep a level of consistency, especially when it comes to learning or when it comes to interaction with the nursery or talking about the nursery, we need to empower our families so this is done to a certain standard because that will help the child’s learning. If they’re being prepped, ‘Okay, on Thursday, Friday, you’re going into nursery, this is what they’ve been learning,’ or, ‘These are pictures of your teachers, and this is what you’re looking forward to.’ I think it’s important. We’ve got a big role to play when it comes to the community, and when it comes to our families, and when it comes to the children.

Lisa

What would be your good practice points in terms of working with families and working with community?

Jamel

Listening to our families. Listening to our families and taking onboard any suggestions, any information they 42may have, even when it comes to cultural things, they might have suggestions of a book or a song or a film or something. Each person, as I said before, has their own narrative. Just the same way each practitioner, educator, consultant has their own narrative. We all have our own experiences, and I think when you create a platform, a culture in the workplace or in the nursery where everyone is able to share, and everyone is listened to, you’re then able to build those positive relationships.

Having those positive relationships, especially the family, those parent partnerships you are then able to build, and whenever you’re doing anything in the nursery, parents feel more comfortable to engage and to interact. And when the parents are comfortable, that then in turn makes the child comfortable. I think also that this is why the workforce is so important in terms of diversity and inclusion, because there is a disconnect when it comes to different cultures. If you walk into a room and there aren’t any faces that you can connect to or you can relate to, then you feel like, am I supposed to be here? Do I belong here?

If you had an all-black staff team and a white child comes into the room, imagine that white child hasn’t interacted with any black people before, then it’s going to be unsettling, isn’t it? It’s important that we have that diversity there, that there’s someone that each child can connect to, and also be able to then build relationships with the whole staff team, especially seeing those positive relationships between each member.

Lisa

We know how female dominated the workforce is in early years and that you’re an ambassador for men in the early years. As ambassador, first of all, how do you encourage more men into the profession, and what would you say 43are the real benefits for those men coming into the profession, but of course, also for the children?

Jamel

Breaking down biases, and negative stereotypes about men being nurturing. A lot of people don’t think that men can do a nurturing role, and it’s complete rubbish. Men can be nurturers, men change nappies, men can make a bottle, men can tend to a child’s needs if they’re feeling upset or they’re feeling a bit scared, a bit wary, and it’s for everyone to understand that all men are different. No man is the same, just like no woman is the same, and we all bring something different to the table.

There might be John from Thamesmead, who’s a real avid painter, he’s brilliant at painting, but then you might have Steven who’s a really good cook, or Tom who loves role play, he loves dressing up. Each person has their key attributes, and when you bring those key attributes to the profession, as a practitioner you’re then able to implement and share, and your experience is then, as I said before, creating that scaffolding that would then help children later on in life to know that the one picture that they had of males is now going to be lots of different pictures of males, and we can have lots of different experience with different types of males, and so on.

And to encourage more men into the early years, I feel like a lot of men don’t know that this is a job that they can do and often the early years is seen as women’s work. I just think in the media, newspapers, people like myself as ambassadors, just need to keep sharing and showing the world the good practice. That will help. I think that’s the main thing, showing men working with women and sharing that information with the wider community.

Lisa

What are your key attributes that you bring?

44Jamel

I’m just crazy. I just do so many different things. I think just the inner child, loving cartoons, loving drawing, I love messy play, I love maths, I love literacy, I love cultures, I love music. I just love sharing. I love sharing my culture. When I used to work in a nursery in the city which was formed of predominantly white and Asian children, I used to play Bob Marley every day. Bob Marley reggae, and the children used to dance and sing and ask questions. I just think that’s what I bring to the table, just who I am.

My identity as a black man, because most of these children might not have engaged with a black man or had the experience of engaging with a black man like myself. It’s just important to show children that this is me, this is what I like as a black man and this is what I like as me. I like cartoons, I love drawing, I love this, I love that. Once they see you enjoying it, I think that the enjoyment side is really important as well. I enjoy working in the early years. So, when children see you enjoying what you do, they feed off of that. They feed off of that energy, and that’s what I bring to the table on the ground.

Lisa

I love that, thank you.

Jamel

I think a key as well to helping to diversify pedagogy, diversify nursery provisions is diversifying our nurseries even if there’s black people there or not, or even if there’s Asian people there or not, or Jewish or white, and so forth. I think sometimes diversity is seen as something that you just tick off of a list and a lot of people, they will think that them having Handa’s Surprise in the classroom library is having diversity within their books, within their library, within their literacy and it’s not good enough. We need to do better.

Even if your community is mainly white, it’s your chance to bridge the gap and share diversity, and introduce these 45children to diversity because the curriculum creates the future community, and that community becomes the workforce, and it’s an endless circle with the child in the middle. We need to consider that factor, so that’s what I want to share. Also, I’m writing a children’s book. The manuscript is written and it’s about being a black male nursery teacher and I’m pushing for that at the moment. Living my practice.

Reflections

Talking with Jamel really brought to the fore the lack of diversity in working within the early years sector, not just with the lack of men working in this field but also around racial and cultural diversity. The impact of this on perspectives, on ways of viewing childhood, parenting and education are potentially the areas least spoken about and made explicit.

Discussion points

If we understand that belonging is a biological imperative, how important in feeling that we belong, is it that we see others who ‘look like us’?

What would it bring to learning if all those working in youth work experienced working in the early years and vice versa?

Do the inequalities in early years provisions reflect the areas that have lost youth workers and how might this have impacted on the developing child?