The Ritual Of A Daily Diary

In one of my previous post I spoke about how educators diary/journal never gets completed within a year, and it had me thinking about another type of diary. This is not a book but a document featuring a catalogue of photos and paragraphs of words reflecting on the children's day in a service.

The daily diary often requires every child to be included in the 'document'.

The ritual of putting together a 'Daily Diary' or 'Our Day' post is a document which is time consuming for the one nominated with the task for the day. Often the task can only be completed when time permits you to be off the floor otherwise it's near impossible when focusing on the children's needs, covering for staff breaks, cleaning and everything else that an educator needs to navigate during the course of their day.

Every service reflects in different ways, some have a slide show at the sign-in desk for parents to view upon arrival/departure, others load images and text onto digital platforms like Storypark, and for those wishing to have a hard copy, it means printing out photos which are presented in a hard covered book. I have no doubt that everyone has an opinion on this document, so I'm going to share mine.

Often children are photographed when they're just observing an experience but had no engagement at all.

My personal experience with the daily diary had one main outcome, taking up valuable time which could be better used.. More than once, twice or ten times I've uploaded photos during my lunch break, or snatched moments when the children were resting, or had to complete the task first thing the next morning, which meant coming in before anyone else could use the staff computer.

Thank goodness for the rule that all phones need to be left in the staff room and photos must be taken on the service tablet or staff computer. It's eliminated the need to request other educators to send through photos of their reflection of the day which often gets lost in translation, along with photos that disappear in the black hole of the Icloud then magically appear the next day.

Showing children engaged in experiences that they're not engaged in at all. Just because they were standing around the table doesn't mean they went on to instigate conversations based around the experience, sit down to focus for a period of time or create something to take home.

As an educator how are we meant to write about an experience to accompany the photos not taken by ourselves if we weren't present. Personally I need to be present to understand the learning outcomes, social skills, listen, developmental growth, process, observe, exchange dialogue, and the list goes on.

Even when other educators want to share a paragraph or two about what was occurring at the experience I often don't feel comfortable because the document becomes bigger than the weekly plan with more photos and descriptions. And if your the author of the diary you should be able to explain to parents the whole story behind images and text.

It would be a different story if I was working in collaboration with another educator on a weekly basis. We would learn how to 'read' and find meaning behind the photos taken or scribbled notes between us, especially when involved in a slow pedagogy project or a group setting.

The document I prefer to share with parents is what I call a 'living diary'. It has depth and shows the pathways taken to enhance the children's interest and educators critical reflection. Below is an example of how an interest in creating a space for bees evolved.

Another factor that comes into play is the it's always being done this way' mentality between staff and educators. People share their desire to make changes but that's about the limitation of their thoughts. Often the daily diary is questioned at the start and end of each year when planning commences for the new year.

Overall the team should collect data on parents engagement with the document (including feedback, percentage of views and comments) and reflect on the families outcomes. This should be followed by inviting educators to contribute their point of view (taking into account EYLF guidelines, service philosophy, time) through open discussion.

As a parent the best reflection of my child's day in service was the smile that greeted me at pick up. When he would be busting to show me what he did today and explain the process, than scrolling through a diary of photos and text on my phone.