Education Team Lead Terri Foster Reflects on Enlightened Shadowing

Learning Seeds recently celebrated Terri Foster’s Fifth Anniversary as Education Team Lead.

Terri reflected on the role of the Enlightened Shadow, and how the experience that best qualified her for the role was the same day-to-day childcare tasks that many caring adults carry out by the sides of the children in their lives.

“How did I get here, getting to do this work with this amazing team changing children’s lives, when ‘all I did’ was spend 25 years of my life with young children at my side, doing the work of raising small children and treating small children as an OT? 

“Endless days wiping faces, clicking car seats, making playdough, playing house, rolling down hills – thinking that I was missing out on the real important work of the field, as other colleagues moved on to work in the research, administrative, and business sides of the field.

“But what I have come to learn through being at Learning Seeds is that those 25 years shaped me into something that we are capturing at Learning Seeds. When we spend time over and over again at the sides of young children, we learn how to support them to explore, interact and imagine together. It becomes instinctual. When I am at the side of a child doing this work, there is no question that this is the support children need! 

“Thankfully, we on the Learning Seeds Team are capturing what we are doing, naming it and documenting it so that we can support engagement for all children, share it with others and continue to change the lives of children. Here is to many more years!”