Every child is working on something! Every child needs something unique. Learn about how inclusion takes us beyond reacting to the behavior of individual children to redefine our interactions with children and families and our very concept of children, communities, and curriculum. Learn how “neuro-equity” helps unite threads of anti-bias education - language, race, culture, ability - from the foundation of the nervous system. Leave this workshop with renewed confidence and commitment, as well as hands-on tools for a proactive approach.

A great teacher works from an internal way of being with children. How can you integrate and adopt the two key curriculum models of our time - inclusion and inquiry - into a holistic approach? Learn how inclusion and inquiry are built on common principles and practices, and how you can naturally weave them together to become the teacher you dream of being. Leave this workshop with specific ideas for fostering children’s ideas and initiative, integrating body and mind-based teaching practices, and a framework for transforming theories into practice.

Many models of inquiry or project-based learning offer complex sequences of steps and techniques. At their core, inquiry models - The Project Approach, Reggio Emilia or New Zealand’s Te Whariki - are based on teacher dispositions: your way of appreciating the competence and contributions of children. In this workshop, we skip the flow charts and go straight to the heart of inquiry: how to relax and really see and be with children. Leave this workshop with some key frameworks - among them STEM education, Schema Theory, The Thinking Lens and Powerful Interactions - to help you build problem-solving curriculum through your relationships with children.

Infants and Toddlers don’t have group planning meetings and they don’t sketch or graph. So what do long term investigations look like for the youngest learners? Learn how to use concepts like Schema Theory to recognize the powerful, intentional intellect of children under three years and how to promote extended thinking around sensory-motor exploration of the world around us. Learn about how to engage families as curriculum partners and to integrate care with learning. Leave this workshop with specific ideas for building ongoing learning experiences from nurturing relationships.

I encounter countless cases of educators disagreeing about what should or should not happen in an early childhood program. Learn in this workshop how to dig beneath the what all the way down to who: who are you as individuals, what matters to you, where did your values and assumptions come from, how do you think and get things done. Move from this deep reflection up to why: your shared values, goals, dreams. Then on to how: you communicate, divide roles and work, make decisions together. Finally, use this foundation to agree on what decisions you want to make, what kind of program you want to create and what you will offer in terms of environments, interactions and curriculum. Leave this workshop with a concrete system for working together!

Inclusion challenges us to rethink children’s abilities along new lines. But where did our focus on ability as the key definer of children’s identities come from? What does inclusion tell us about how we should think about education? What does it imply about where early childhood education should go and how we should advocate for our field? Learn about how inclusion grew out of a history of educational debates, and what that means for your individual practice. Learn also how you can take your role as a change agent from the classroom to the community and beyond.

Early childhood educators have borne a huge burden lately. Beyond the agonizing twists and turns of the pandemic, shelter-in-place, and reopening amid ever-changing restrictions, we have experienced a huge spike in violence against BIPOC, widening economic inequality and massive loss in the workforce. It’s no wonder that Secondary Trauma for early childhood educators has become a foreground issue. Learn how to use your tool box of teaching skills - social and emotional support, regulation, mindfulness practice, nurturing care and collaboration - to heal yourself and your colleagues in response to the trauma of the past few years. Learn in this workshop specific perspectives and techniques to help yourself to the support you have offered others and how to use stress and trauma as a springboard for growth and positive change. Leave this workshop feeling reconnected to your practice, your colleagues and the passion that brought you into the field!

Early Childhood Educators today must juggle multiple frameworks for assessment and quality: DRDP, ERS, CLASS, and, in California, TPEs (Teacher Performance Expectations). Learn how these frameworks align with each other and form a flexible but comprehensive backbone to advancing your unique vision of teaching. Reflect together how to work with external systems from the inside out, where they serve your needs and vision. Leave this workshop with specific systems for weaving outside expectations and systems into your own dreams, goals and style.

Inclusion focuses on the concept of “bottom up” supports - helping children feel comfortable and calm in their bodies in order to enable the development of their minds. It calls for us to flip our own experiences and perspectives of learning and teaching, and to begin again from the “bottom up.” Learn how to understand a child’s nervous system and physical needs, how to use your own regulation and affect to create a just and joyous learning environment that supports a wide range of learners - including autism spectrum, learning differences, and physical challenges. Leave this workshop with a clear understanding of how you can easily and creatively make significant changes to your teaching approach.

Our rapidly expanding understanding of the human brain has created a tapestry of new threads in Early Childhood Education - Mindfulness, Trauma-informed Care - an overall emphasis on Metacognition. Learn how these threads can be woven into a basic approach of appreciating and nurturing the mind: how to promote children’s critical thinking; help children understand their own regulation and emotions; and how to foster a brain-rich program.