Our Relationship to the Cycle of Caring

The cycle of caring is the path educators experience during their teaching careers. All people in the helping professions experience the cycle of caring differently. The cycle of caring is explained in the book The Resilient Practitioner by Thomas M. Skovholt and Michelle Trotter-Mathison and features four stages, attachment, involvement, separation, and re-creation.

In our practice, educators are relationship-makers who create attachments with children. We are involved with the children during the day, separate as children leave the classroom or the school year ends, and step away from our professional identity in the evenings, weekends, school holidays, and summer break. Each phase of the cycle of caring is essential to our practice.

Attachment phase – The warmth, support, attention, and understanding we share with children provides healing, strengthens, and stimulate growth. Learning how to experience a child's world and provide support is an essential skill for educators.

My practice of the attachment phase is the most challenging part of my work. Some children are open to working together and being active after school, and I connect with these children easily. Other children want to be home instead of in our program, and I sometimes struggle to connect with them. My role in the attachment phase is to support children experiencing emotional or social challenges in the learning community. I want each child in our program to know someone cares about them, listens to them, and supports their growth in our community.

Involvement Phase – The work of teaching takes place during this phase. As educators, we are in continuous attachment with the children working and learning together. We support the children as they wonder, investigate, and discover answers to their questions.

My connection to the involvement phase is the most substantial part of my practice. I enjoy working in the classroom and partnering with the children. I embrace the challenges of active involvement and look forward to the adventure each day. I enjoy the process of documenting, engaging, analyzing, and supporting the learning community.

Separation Phase – Teaching requires a balance of connection with children and the ability to say goodbye as the children move on to the next phase of life. The separation must take place so new connections can form as the end of one school year blossoms into another opportunity to support new children in our program.

Separation is a practice I am comfortable with. Separation is part of the teaching journey. I am sad when a group of children or individual children leave the program. We share many experiences in the days and years we are together. Each child makes incredible progress in our program and is ready for the next stage of life. I remember many children to this day. The stories we shared will always be part of my life. Our program always has celebrations at the end of the year to mark our time together and prepare ourselves to say goodbye. Each celebration is a time to rejoice and prepare for the next phase of our journey in the learning community.

Re-Creation Phase – In the Resilient Practitioner book, the authors call re-creation the getting away from the work phase. The re-creation phase is embodied in rest, refurbishment, repair, restoration, and return. All educators need time away from the classroom to recharge our batteries so we can care for others.

Re-Creation is my favorite part of the cycle of caring. I look forward to beginning again with a new group of children after some time away from the program. I use my re-creation time to care for myself and engage in activities I enjoy. I also use this time for self-reflection. I like reading past journal entries and reviewing the documentation from the previous year's projects to see what I can learn from our experiences. Re-creation is an essential part of the preparation for each new school year. Some children will return to the classroom. New children will join the returning children creating a unique learning community that will build a relationship during the school year.

An essential part of our practice as educators is to recognize our experiences in the cycle of caring. As we go through each cycle phase, we learn about ourselves and our relationship with the learning community. Taking time to examine how we connect to the cycle of caring helps us discover what areas of our practice affect us and how we can nurture ourselves through the re-creation phase. Our well-being as educators connects directly to how we negotiate the experiences in our teaching journey.

What is your relationship to the cycle of caring? How does the cycle of caring influence your classroom practice?