I Want to Know Why

I want to talk about my initial reactions to the work—my emotional reactions. I know these are framed by my past experiences—including culture and privilege. It’s not that I’m a different person in different settings, but I need this space to say some things that I might not be ready to say in the larger meetings—a way to find language for competing thoughts and feelings. — Rebecca

Rebecca shared this at her first supervision session. Rebecca was an early childhood coach and Virginia was her mentor coach; they worked together as part of the Guttman Center’s project designed to support early care providers (see Brickley, this issue; Hancock, this issue). At this initial meeting, Rebecca was eager to roll up her sleeves and discuss with Virginia her first visits with providers. On some level, Rebecca sensed that Virginia would understand and validate her message. Although she expressed a need for privacy, neither of us knew that these conversations would result in a collaboration that would eventually become public through this article.

Our first meeting was followed by a provocative and generative learning relationship that led to new ideas. This article chronicles the somewhat circuitous path we took—telling each other stories of practice and exchanging curiosities, emotions, and at times unanswerable questions—that helped us learn and grow as we worked together to develop Rebecca’s ability to support early care providers and Virginia’s ability to support Rebecca.

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