Educators Never Note

A note on the Educators Should Never page

Most child safety resources for young children address children. They teach children to recognise unsafe situations, to say no, to tell a trusted adult. That work is essential and The Hoot Hoot Way does all of it.

But we made a deliberate decision to also address the adults in the room.

The Educators Should Never page names, clearly and visibly, the standards that every child deserves from every adult in their care. It is not a list of accusations. It is a commitment — one that good educators already hold, made visible in a place where children can see it.

We included it because we believe children deserve to know not just what they can do to stay safe, but what the adults around them have promised to do. That knowledge is itself a form of safety.

When this page is read aloud in a classroom, something happens on children's faces that doesn't happen anywhere else in the book. They go still. They receive it. They are taking in information that matters to them in a way that is different from a rhyme about spaghetti or a game of finding Benny. They understand, in whatever way a four or five year old understands significant things, that someone has thought carefully about them.

We also know this page will sit differently with different readers. Some parents will find it confronting. Some educators will wonder why it is in a children's book rather than a staff handbook. Both responses are understandable.

Our answer is this — child safety policies live in staff handbooks that children never see and parents rarely read. We wanted the commitment to live somewhere else too. Somewhere a child could point to it. Somewhere a family reading together at home could have the conversation. Somewhere it was simply present, the way Miss Owl is simply present, watching and caring and keeping watch.

The page does not need to be read aloud. In a home setting or a classroom where it doesn't feel appropriate, it can be turned past quietly. The commitment is still there whether it's spoken or not.

We made this decision knowing it was unusual. We have not regretted it.

Every child who sits in a classroom, every child who is read this book at home, deserves to be in a space where those promises have been made. The Educators Should Never page is our way of making them visible.

A note on Miss Owl's Classroom

The discussion prompts at the back of the book are there because we know that the most important conversations don't always start easily. Belonging, safety, feelings, speaking up — these are things children think about and rarely have language for.

Miss Owl's Classroom gives educators and families a way in. Not a script. Not a lesson plan. Just the questions that are worth asking, grouped by theme, available whenever the moment is right.

Some will be used in circle time. Some will happen in the car on the way home. Some will sit unasked for months and then arrive naturally in a moment that needed them.

That's exactly how they're meant to work.