A post from Early Childhood Ireland!

Celebrating Children’s Stories with Wendy Lee

September 12, 2017

On Saturday, Early Childhood Ireland, in partnership with DCU, Institute of Education, presented Celebrating Children’s Stories, A Masterclass in Documentation with Wendy Lee. An inspirational day of questioning and reflection as Wendy straight away set the tone by reminding us that huge responsibility comes with teaching in ECCE: ‘How many jobs can you go to each day and have the chance to make a difference in a child’s life? Who we are and how we are around children is at the heart of teaching. Relationships are critical, children need to feel deeply respected and deeply loved’.

The use of story, connects children and families, it tunes teachers into the moment and it allows all children to share their experiences and their understanding of the world around them. Learning stories catch the complexity of children’s learning, it also makes every voice credible. It is about children recognising and valuing who they are by teachers that know them and care deeply for them.

We would like to thank the following guest speakers who generously gave their time to share their own learning stories and experiences. Each speaker brought us on a different journey, showing how they weave stories into the fabric of their settings. 
Nickola Cullen from Beverton Preschool and Roots and Wings Centre Donabate
Maxine Ryan and Aine Harrington from Clare Family Resource Centre Ennis
Anne Macken and her team from Happy Days Ballyporeen
Alicia Cormican from Darndale Integrated Childcare Service

You too can submit stories that show significant learning moments or events that happen through play in your service. Go to Learning Stories section on our website.

In the afternoon, Dr. Play, Carmel Brennan delivered an emotionally charged and passionate presentation, her last one as part of Early Childhood Ireland before her retirement next month. A call to ‘re-wild’ the child and remove the structure. Encouraging deep reflection, she referred to Jim Greenman’s quote “childhood is when human beings should fall in love with the world.” “Are we giving the children in our care the opportunity to fall in love with the world?” she asked.

Portugal, our first stop!

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Six members of the ELP team set off  to spend four weeks sharing the work of Learning Stories in Germany. This is part of ongoing work we have been doing in Germany over several years. The work began in the early 2000’s when Margaret Carr and I visited Germany on the invitation of the Youth Institute. The Head of the Institute had read Margaret’s book on Assessment and was very interested in the work around dispositions. Learning Stories are now found all over Germany and in many different forms. Many reciprocal visits have subsequently taken place in Germany and New Zealand. This is the second major trip to Germany. Seven of the ELP team went to Germany 2 years ago for a month long trip around Germany sharing our work.

Our first stop was Oporto in Portugal. 

ELP team from left to right: Jo Colbert, Kathryn Delany, Alison Brierley, Lorraine Sands, Robyn Lawrence & Wendy Lee

The European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) Annual conference was being held here and we all were successful in having our papers accepted and so we presented two Symposia. These were:

Symposium 1

Strengthening the community of learners using action research as the key pathway to pedagogical change.

All three papers submitted for the EECERA Conference stemmed from action research. They describe the experience of building strong learning communities in three very different contexts:

1.     An Early Childhood Setting, with a teacher-led service.

2.     A Playcentre Setting, with a parent-led service.

3.     A group of Early Childhood centres working within and beyond their own settings.

All of the settings discussed here were committed to strengthening their community of learners and building a stronger, professional learning community. The three papers were:

Awi mai awhi atu. Helping me, helping you.

Fostering social competence in a mixed-age early childhood centre.

This paper was presented by Alison Brierley

Mātauranga: building knowledge, wisdom and understanding in a leaderful community

This paper was presented by Jo Colbert

He iwi whānui o ngā kaiako ākonga

A Community of Teacher Learners; Aspects of effective professional development.

This paper was presented by Kathryn Delany

Symposium 2

Building a Research Culture of teachers working with Infants and Toddlers in Early Childhood Settings in NZ

As Project Facilitators working within the Educational Leadership Project (ELP) in Aotearoa New Zealand we put together three perspectives that each consider some of the ways in which we are working with infants and toddler communities to both strengthen and enhance a research culture to strengthen early childhood learning. The three papers were:

·      Growing Leaders from Infancy

·      Enhancing and Strengthening Courage and Bravery Through the Support of a Trusted Companion in a Leaderful Community

·      Constructing Identities as Professional Lifelong Learners

This work illustrates the transformational  power of professional learning and it consolidates the support of everyone in the wider community to become life long learners in the 21 century.

The notion of both teachers and children as researchers is being embedded in the fabric of early childhood education in New Zealand and these three papers presented exemplars in which both children and teachers are the co-constructors of their own learning. Teachers’ voices highlighted aspects of shifts in practice based on researching pedagogy, transforming competence, and exploring leadership. The three papers were:

Growing leaders from infancy

This paper was presented by Lorraine Sands

Enhancing and Strengthening Courage and Bravery Through the Support of a Trusted Companion in a Leaderful Community

This paper was presented by Robyn Lawrence

Constructing Teacher Identities as Lifelong Learners and Researchers

This paper was presented by Wendy Lee

Margaret Carr was the first keynote speaker of the conference!

Margaret was introduced by Margy Whalley

The main conference lecture theatre

Me enjoying morning tea, time to catch up with people!

Conference Dinner held in a spectacular location high on hills overlooking the river.

 I think I will add a few photos from Oporto in a couple of days. Cheers, Wendy

A weekend in Sydney

After speaking at a two day conference 'Through the Looking Glass... a lens on quality preschools', we (Dave and I) went on to have a lovely weekend in Sydney. Dave had already spent a couple of days cruising around Sydney's fabulous harbour and visiting museums. On the weekend we walked around The Rocks, visited the markets, relaxed in lovely cafe's and explored the Darling Habour.

Some of the highlights of the weekend included:

Experiencing La Boheme in the Sydney Opera House

Attending a very thought provoking play at Sydney Theatre ‘Bloodlands’...

and spending time with my cousin Rodford...

Dave & Rodford

 All in all we enjoyed a very lovely weekend in Australia together!

An opportunity to speak on the Sunshine Coast, Australia

This month I was given an opportunity to speak at the C & K Conference on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet new people and also to connect with old friends from New Zealand as well.

One of the highlights of the conference was listening to a teacher talk about one of their volunteers. His name is Ty Belnap and he has been volunteering in the kindergarten for 8 years. This is just one of his contributions to his community. At the conference Ty was given an award for his contribution to the kindergarten. As a person with Down Syndrome his contribution to the life of the early childhood setting is considerable, Kendall Storti, who is the Director of the Caloundra Community Kindergarten, where this award was presented at the C&K Association State Conference had this to say after the conference... "It was a great morning, we were so glad Ty enjoyed it! I had so many people come up to me afterwards with so many positive comments and a lot from people who have a child with a disability and how Ty had shown them what you can do!! and all were so impressed with Ty!! Once again he has touched the lives of so many, they tell me there weren't very many dry eyes in the lecture theatre".
You can view the news article about Ty on the following link-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDqV2e1ToIcu

Another highlight was listening to the other keynote speaker, Antony Semann. His keynote was focussed on 'courage'. This is a disposition that is deeply embedded in our Curriculum Te Whariki. He gave all of us plenty of food for thought around what this might look like in an early childhood setting.