MetroLab Staffer: One Way Research Informs Practice
Before joining MetroLab Network, Senior Director of Civic Research Kim Lucas served as the City of Boston’s Open Data Manager on the Citywide Analytics Team. Prior to that, they served as the Director Civic Research for the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. As an academic with a background in child development, they brought a unique perspective to the civic data and civic research work they carried out and penned an article with apolitical about that perspective in submission to the 2020 American Public Servant Writing Competition. We’re republishing their piece below. Check out the original, published by apolitical on June 3, 2020, here.
Everything I’ve learned, I learned from a 3-year old
Transitions are hard. Knowing what to expect can make them a little less so
I’m an academic by training: years of studying child growth and development and working in the early childhood field have equipped me with a strong understanding of our youngest residents. And while I’ve spent quite some time in a classroom and behind a computer, it’s from my time working directly with young children, their families, and their caregivers that I’ve learned the most.
For nearly five years I’ve had the opportunity to work as a public servant in the City of Boston. I’ve had the privilege of working on financial empowerment, early childhood development, higher education, and research and data projects. I’ve been fortunate to meet a multitude of dedicated colleagues in other departments as well as civically-minded collaborators from partner companies and organizations. And every day, I’ve relied on lessons from my work in the early childhood field to guide how I operate within and beyond City Hall.
Chief among these lessons: transitions are hard.
Any child development person — or, really, any person who has spent significant time with a young child — will know just how hard transitions can be. Is starting in a new school hard? Finding new friends? Or starting a new activity? Yes, yes, yes. Transitioning from where we were and what we were doing to something new is difficult.
When I worked as an early educator, I met a 3-year-old who had a hard time waking up from her naps. It was difficult for her to come out of a warm, sleepy haze and into a room full of loud, fast toddlers and preschoolers. We worked out a way for her to sit on the couch and read quietly until she felt ready and excited to join the others: no pressure one way or the other, just time and space for her to do what she needed to do to take part in the rest of the day.
I think back on this experience often when I go about my day to day at City Hall. Whether it’s my own transition between meetings, a colleague’s transition to a new role, an external partner’s transition to working with collaborators, or a constituent’s transition from their daily lives into a community meeting, transitions are happening all around us. And so I think back on how we created the time and space for that 3-year-old to weather her transition from nap to playtime and often ask myself how I might do the same in my current role. How might we create the time and space for people — constituents, colleagues, ourselves — to get from point A to point B? To learn new things? To consider new or different experiences? And what might it look like if we were successful?
While I don’t imagine I have all the answers to these questions, I want to offer a few things for you to consider:
Address anxiety. A lot of anxiety in transition comes from the unknown. With my 3-year-old friend, we learned that she sometimes wasn’t ready for a loud room full of buzz and excitement right after waking up from a deep sleep. Sometimes she would wake up and that would be the case, but other times, everyone else would be operating at her sleepy speed. Not knowing what to expect when she stepped out of the naproom meant that she was afraid that it would be too loud — and that affected how well she slept. Before we stepped out, we talked about what the mood was like in the next room — and then we’d go over our routine: walk to the couch, find a book, read together quietly. The predictability — even through the loudness — helped her anticipate next steps.
Create familiarity. Speaking of the routine, that was a key piece. It became predictable; it became familiar and stable. And it didn’t just help my 3-year-old friend: it helped the other children in the room see and understand that everyone had their own routines. Routines and familiarity reinforce the fact that there are some things that can remain stable in unstable or unpredictable times. They helped my young friend weather the chaos around her — and they helped her peers see and understand that they could help their friend as well, by doing their loud playing in a different space or joining her in quietly reading.
Make the space. For my 3-year-old friend, “making space” meant making physical space for her to sit and read on the couch. Sometimes actual space is necessary for folks to make transitions. Commutes often do this for people — by physically moving through space, we signal that we’re transitioning from home to work or work to home. Other times, making space means that we make room to let folks process their thoughts, feel their feelings, or just be. Making space means granting permission — or, better, welcoming — the activities and rituals that people need to do to transition into a new thing.
Anticipate different processing speeds. Even when we’ve done all of the above, it’s important to acknowledge that humans are all different. That means that we will all move through the same transition at different paces. A single person might move through the same transition differently, depending on the context. My 3-year-old friend seemed to breeze through a book twice as fast when she could smell cookies baking for snack time. What this shows is that we can’t hold the same transition expectations for everyone. When we think about addressing anxieties, creating familiarity, and making space, we also have to acknowledge that different people will make the transition in different ways at different paces. And that’s okay.
Change is scary. Transitions are hard. But if we might take a lesson from a 3-year-old, it could be that we, as public servants, have the great power and privilege of being able to help make things less scary and less difficult for others.
