Everyday acts of courage

By Kristen Myers-Tapim, Director of MLC Kindle

Stella demonstrates her courageous spirit and a sense of accomplishment by walking up the stairs outside the Sparrows Nest.

Cathy J. Lassiter, an educational consultant, speaks about everyday courage and the ‘four types of courage’ that exist within, including moral, disciplined, intellectual, and empathetic courage. When Lassiter explains moral courage, she speaks about standing up to face injustices, while disciplined courage relates to moving through setbacks and failures. Intellectual courage is acting to make changes based on new learnings, and empathetic courage refers to moving intentionally away from our own bias to rejoice in the achievements of others. Although she relates everyday courage to that of a school leader, what if we were to move that thinking and see it from the perspective of a young child? These forms of courage are observed and encouraged every day at MLC Kindle, such as finding the inner courage to seek justice for themselves and their peers. This is pivotal learning, particularly in the 3 and 4-year-old classrooms where children have greater awareness of others and are developing conflict resolution skills. Disciplined courage reflects the courage to keep pushing through mistakes and obstacles; an example that comes to mind is when we see our students repeatedly forming letters as they learn to write their name. Let’s not forget our very youngest in our Sparrow’s Nest room: taking those very first steps, building upon their knowledge and experience of standing up, crawling, sitting, rolling over and observing all those around them. Intellectual courage is certainly involved in making those very first unknown tentative steps. Finally, we visualise empathetic courage, moving intentionally away from our own bias to rejoice in the achievements of others, in our students cheering for their peers. The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework encourages safe risk-taking to further develop each child’s metacognition: “They know that failure is a valuable part of learning, are able to learn from mistakes to enhance future success, and they become more skilled at seeking help when they need it.” After all, we want children to grow into confident and courageous adults who strive to be a positive change in the world.