Presented by: Giselle Mirabelle

Early childhood educators play a critical role in fostering a sense of belonging, respect, and understanding among young children and their families. This interactive workshop will explore innovative ways of designing culturally relevant spaces to empower educators with the knowledge and tools needed to create inclusive nurturing learning spaces that celebrate diversity of the children and families served.

• Understanding Cultural Competency: further explore cultural competency and its connections to early childhood education.

• Inclusive Curriculum Development: Explore strategies for incorporating diverse experiences with activity design ideas to reflect the children’s cultural identities.

• Family and Community Engagement: Discover how to create strong partnerships with families and the importance of involvement.

• Creating Inclusive Spaces: Explore the physical classroom arrangements to promote inclusivity. Understand the impact of the environments of children’s sense of belonging.

 Presented by: Nicole Cummings-Morgan OCT, MA CSE, BASc, RECE

When you understand what LOVE really is - not the romanticized love you've been understanding it to be - you will understand that it really is what makes things work, AT WORK! And when love becomes the centre of all the relationships at work, your whole being becomes healthy - mentally, physically, socially and emotionally. Using the book, all about love by bell hooks, as a starting point participants will:

• Remember what love feels like; reflect on how it impacts their actions; change their actions to reflect what they remember about what love feels like, and then maintain that change.

• Hear about how love at work makes things better for their mind, body and soul.

• Understand how love is the beginning of building authentic relationships with the children, their families, their co-workers, supervisors and the communities they work with.

Through interactive activities, thought-provoking discussions, (and possibly some role-playing) participants will have a good time hearing a different take on understanding love and how it will make things at work, truly work!

Presented by: Bernice Cipparrone Mcleod, Shailja Jain

Practitioners strive to deepen their understanding of children, families, and communities, aspiring to build stronger, caring, and safe communities for all members of society starting with early learning and care programs. The Canada-Wide Early Learning Framework (CWELF) as well as other significant policy and pedagogical frameworks, have been born out of decades of research and advocacy from the ECE community to ensure the availability of accessible inclusive and equitable programs. Still, the current climate urges practitioners to do even more to challenge deficit narratives, images, and teachings related to human differences, particularly Black, Racialized, Indigenous children, and their families as well as the educators themselves. Our session is influenced by, “Black Joy” that is, the movement to celebrate, magnify the success, and the resistance of Black people and also aims to liberate Black bodies. Recognizing that individuals’ lives are intersectional, we also believe it is important that practitioners value expansive gender identities along with other social identities, which influences children and their families experiences in the world. Our plan is to instill a sense of optimism as we engage in conversations about the opportunities to expand practitioners work with children and families by re-thinking, unlearning, and disrupting traditional approaches to early learning and care in response to their desire for change, and their curiosities about how to create learning environments that promote a culturally safe program for Black Children, their families, and Black educators themselves. Specifically, our workshop will focus on anti-racist pedagogy as necessary to combat oppression and create brave spaces for the practitioners, the children, and their families. Participants will:

• Share their own practical and lived experiences in relation to the issues of anti-racism and gender expansiveness in early childhood.

• Engage in discussion through case study examples and small group discussions

• Build strategies to critically reflect on their own practices in order to transform the space of early childhood.

Presented by: Maya - Rose Simon, Olga Rossovska and Bora Kim

In a fast-paced world with high demands and responsibilities, a sense of balance and feeling of calm and content are a privilege. Using Etuaptmumk/Two Eyed Seeing pedagogical approach of braiding Indigenous and non-Indigenous views this session will offer hands-on and Land-based strategies for educators that empathize on educator wholistic well-being. The session will focus on how daily practices of co-teaching and co-learning on the Land can support in restoring balance.

This session will offer attendees:

• Engage in hands on experiences on the Land with spirit, heart, mind, and body

• Re-engage with the Land to support wholistic wellness and health using Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing pedagogy

• Build on current wealth of knowledge that values co-teaching and co-learning on the Land.

This session will be facilitated on the Land (rain or shine) co-learning with and from Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators to embrace the guiding principles of Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing. As attendees will be invited to engage in experiences on the Land throughout the session*, we ask that they dress appropriately for the weather.

Presented by: Alison Grbic

Leaders will learn practical steps to support their own mental and emotional health through focusing on 3 areas; Self Care, Emotional Balance and Intuitive Knowledge. They will learn to:

• Go within, listen to themselves, own needs, by getting quiet, doing things they enjoy to do the inner reflective work, discover areas of healing, acceptance, releasing past wounds, fears/doubts to live as their true authentic self.

• To see the value of self-care and its benefits as they fill their cup, to function at their optimum to best support others without self-sabotage.

• To gain insight, wisdom, intuitive knowledge to guide them each day and “to tune in/tap in”.

• Use the “Intuitive Model” as a guide to recognize, honour, access their intuition, and take action based on their intuitive promptings providing clarity to make difficult decisions or face conflict or stressful situations as self reliant, confident and empowered leaders.

• To balance empathy, accept others, set healthy boundaries and use intuitive discernment with people/situations to support others in traumatic/adverse situations by being objective, grounded, through intuitive interactions creating deeper connections, understanding of self/others.

• To understand intuition works in tandem with emotional balance and through use of "Steps to Emotional Balance" to improve self-awareness, acceptance of self/others, reflect on areas that require healing of triggers/wounds, old beliefs, biases, assumptions or attachments. Building their own emotional/mental health, raise their vibration, create more happiness, opportunities and positivity in their own lives having a ripple effect on teams and communities as they are better “equipped” to support others, and share this knowledge in reciprocal ways.

• Emotionally healthy, intuitive, leaders in our sector, have a profound, positive impact on uplifting the emotional/mental well being of children, families, staff, overall building sustainable systems and communities to overcome adversity.

Presented by: Ryan Gracie, BA (ECE), MA (ECS)

By the end of this session, participants will:

• Understand key social conditions that underpin homophobic bullying in Canadian early learning/elementary environments (heteronormativity; heterosexism & homophobia);

• Identify the “key players” associated with incidents of homophobic bullying: The bully; the bullied and the bystander;

• Distinguish between the most common forms of homophobic bullying;

• Understand the relevance of homophobic bullying to early childhood education;

• Identify resources and practical strategies for addressing homophobic bullying with children 0 - 12.

Presented by: Tasha Kerr and Rachel Brophy

One way to become an anti-racist educator is to work from a trauma informed lens. In this session we will use storytelling and group discussion to talk about some of the unwritten rules and expectations embedded in our daily routines, transitions and relationships. Many of these practices create and reinforce inequities, oppression and racism. Together we will consider how we might intentionally disrupt and dismantle these harmful practices by being trauma informed in our work with children and families. We hope to create conversation with the group where we highlight the good strategies people are already using and discover some new ways to challenge the status quo as we continue on our journeys to become trauma informed anti-racist educators.  Participants will leave with:

• Emerging understanding of how anti-racism in practice is inherently trauma informed

• Knowledge of how ‘unwritten rules’ are connected to inequity, oppression and racism and impact everyone in early years spaces

• Recognition and celebration of existing strategies used to challenge and confront racism

• New connections with people that we hope will strengthen both networks and confidence in order to create positive change