Understanding their vulnerability: Children have little power and are therefore easily exploited and disempowered. This leads to a need for a pedagogy of "Stewardship" and the need to create a safe space for children to express themselves without the fear of being exploited.
Understanding their uniqueness: This is the key to nurturing children. We need to understand the spark in each child, respect the mystery in each child and therefore, while we try to understand and work with their uniqueness we should not try to reduce each young person to a totally understood human being. We need to lead each child to where they need to go. It is not about "making you into something" rather about helping "make you what you can make of yourself."
Understanding meaning making: Children are involved in a process of making meaning of their selves, their surroundings, their community, and their world. Educators have the power to shape the narrative within which this meaning making takes place.
Understanding community: To enable all the above to happen, it is important to create a community for these to happen and to enable the educators to ask the central questions: Who is the child? What is their greatest gift? What do they fear? How can we make them feel valued?
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