草莓视频

This workshop shares findings from a qualitative study exploring barriers novice early childhood educators experience to applying their pre-service learning in practice. Participants will examine how factors such as insufficient training, misaligned values, educator-to-child ratios, leadership practices, workplace culture and limited opportunities influence educator well-being, confidence, and daily interactions with children. By understanding novice ECEs’ experiences of these barriers, attendees will consider how curriculum developers, early childhood education leaders, and licensing policymakers can improve pre-service programs, practicum experiences, and workplace supports to better prepare and sustain new educators. In line with the conference theme, participants will explore how relational, supportive environments help educators and children thrive together. Through guided reflection and small-group dialogue, participants will collaboratively explore how these barriers show up in diverse early learning contexts and consider a range of possible approaches for addressing them in ways that feel safe, relational, and appropriate to their roles. Rather than prescribing solutions, the session offers space for shared understanding, connection, and thoughtful inquiry.

Presenter: Jodi McBride

This workshop invites participants into conversation about the myriad of kinships that allow us to grow alongside children. Drawing on examples from practice with(in) a new child care centre’s first year of pedagogical ‘thinking and doing’, workshop facilitators will highlight pivotal relationship-building moments with each other, families, fellow creatures who inhabit the area, and the land itself. This includes discussion about pedagogical decisions about the way we frame relations with our beloved ‘buggies’ (used to move 10 children across considerable distances) as fellow participants in the process of visiting, through which ‘Buggy’ becomes more than a means of transportation; rather buggies have become a lively portal/vessel towards rich community engagements. This workshop will highlight some of the joys and challenges of curriculum-making decisions that are aimed at supporting infant-toddlers’ participation in wider community happenings. Participants will be invited into rich small and large group discussions about how we might rethink visiting practices as an act of ‘togetherness’ and presencing young children in creative, democratic practices. There will be opportunities for workshop participants to engage with and add to a ‘traveling canvas’, which began during the September 2025 “Common Worlding: Together-Apart” art exhibit, and continues to travel between UVic Child Care centres as a collective work-in-progress.

Presenters: Narda Nelson, Lynai Quatell, Elise Coulombe, Jamie Arnett

This interactive two-hour workshop explores how everyday communication practices can move educators from managing behaviour to cultivating kinship, belonging, and emotional safety in early childhood spaces. Grounded in current research, early learning frameworks, and reflective ECE practice, participants will examine the relational impact of their words, engage in small-group dialogue, and practice language strategies that inspire connection, uplift children’s identities, and strengthen community. Educators will leave with practical tools and shared language they can bring back to their teams and centres to support inclusive, relationship-based environments where children and adults can thrive together.

Presenter: Reena K. Kukreja

As educators grapple with what it actually means to decolonize our work and build trauma-informed, anti-racist and inclusive programs, it’s essential we make time and space for critical dialogue and reflection. This session is a facilitated discussion where we will use our collective imagination to think about what it means to create a policing free ECE. Together, we’ll talk about how policing and carceral measures are embedded in early years spaces and practice, how to recognize and question this, and why we need to. As we challenge common strategies and rethink concepts of safety and belonging, we make small steps to untangle our work from often hidden and deeply harmful narratives and interactions. This initial conversation is grounded in the understanding that meaningful relationships and kinship can only be built through trust and in spaces where we release ourselves from policing. It is then we can think about connection and joy and dream up something new.

Presenter: Rachel Brophy

This workshop will focus on the current state of progress for child care in BC. While once a leader in Canada, participants will explore how and why the BC government has not lived up to its commitments to expand quality $10aDay programs and implement a sector-wide provincial wage grid for educators. Based on BC programs experiences with the current inadequate $10aDay Operating Funding Model, and the lack of the promised ECE wage grid, we'll introduce a newly-released report with updated ECE wage grid recommendations of $35-$45/hour. We'll discuss advocacy strategies for advancing fair ECE compensation with good working conditions, the expansion of school age care, and the expansion of $10aDay programs with an Operating Funding Model that supports the BC Early Learning Framework.

Presenters: Sharon Gregson, Eric Swanson

Join us for a heart-centered gathering of Indigenous storytelling and songs that honour connection, culture, and community. Through story, voice, and shared experience, this session invites participants to slow down, listen deeply, and reflect on the teachings carried through oral traditions.Together, we will explore how storytelling and song support children’s identity, belonging, and well-being in early learning spaces, while strengthening relationships between educators, families, and community. Participants will leave with inspiration and gentle ways to bring story and song into their daily work with children in respectful and meaningful ways.

Presenters: Sam Casey

This interactive workshop explores how educators can strengthen kinship-based relationships with children and families through trauma-informed practice, attachment principles, cultural humility, and emotional safety. Participants will gain practical tools such as co-regulation strategies, connection rituals, and kinship mapping that they can apply immediately in early learning environments. Grounded in the BC Early Learning Framework and Indigenous Early Learning values, this session will be offering real-world strategies that deepen belonging, honour family strengths, and create safe, responsive spaces where children and families can flourish.

Presenter: Tara Hall

This workshop invites educators to think about how early childhood education settings can genuinely honour the home languages children and families bring into their early years' programs. Drawing from research with educators and immigrant parents across several childcare programs in East Vancouver, Julia will share everyday moments of communication, play, and relationships that reveal both the possibilities and the uncertainties educators experience when trying to support heritage languages. Many participants in the study expressed that they cared deeply about children’s linguistic identities but often felt unsure of what to do without meaningful professional development. This workshop offers space to slow down together and explore practical tools, including using pedagogical documentation to notice and make visible the languages and stories children share, as well as the ways children naturally move between languages in play and conversation. By keeping children’s languages, relationships, and family connections at the centre of our conversations.

Presenter: Julia Magacho Borsari

In this presentation, we invite participants to join members of the Early Learning and Care program from Camosun College as we explore strategies to support inclusion in meaningful ways: Responding to children’s needs, considering physical and sensory accessibility in early childhood programs, and critically selecting children’s literature with representation of disability experiences. Our examples and strategies are rooted in ethics of care and neurodiversity-affirming practice. We will share photos from the childcare centres, practical examples of materials and strategies and resources to help meet children’s needs.

Presenters: Anastasia Butcher, Morgan Myers

Join early childhood centre directors Sara, Karen and Kim in conversation with ECPN Co-Director Kathleen Kummen as they share their experiences as administrators working to create conditions for children, educators, and families to live and learn well together (BC ELF). Using examples from their own practice and reflecting on their centres’ pedagogical commitments, these directors will unpack their learning and processes to continually work on and rework centre practices and policies that respond to the complexities, joys, and challenges of ECE in the 21st century. This will be an interactive workshop in which participants will work together through practice scenarios to generate alternative approaches to pedagogical leadership to transform early childhood spaces.

Presenters: Kathleen Kummen, Sara Sutherland, Karen Vaughan, Kim Ainsworth

This dynamic workshop invites educators to explore how Photovoice has been used as a creative, participatory way to tell the story of land-based learning and leadership programs for ECEs. Using guiding questions and photography, attendees are invited to reflect on their experiences, share stories, and uncover themes that matter in their work. Through hands-on activities and lively discussion, educators will discover how Photovoice can spark reflection, amplify program communication, and strengthen connections to families, funders, and decision-makers in early childhood settings.

Presenters: Olufunmilola (Kemi) Odegbile, Jessica McQuiggan

Emotional Intelligence in Action: Kinship, balance, and thriving teamwork is an interactive and practical workshop for early childhood educators and leaders. Participants will explore the of understanding emotional intelligence (EQ) how it strengthens relationships, supports self-care, and fosters a positive, inclusive learning environment. Through interactive activities and actionable strategies, participants will learn to apply EQ skills—such as self-awareness, empathy, and effective communication to create thriving, resilient early childhood teams where children and adults alike feel supported and empowered.

Presenter: Pooja Kalsi

When children spend time on the land, their bodies, minds, and spirits come alive. Learning Outside Together (LOT) grew from educators’ observations during the pandemic: children were calmer, happier, and more connected outdoors. This discussion-based session invites participants to explore how outdoor environments nurture holistic child development, belonging, and wellbeing. Through shared stories, dialogue, and reflective practice rooted in Indigenous perspectives, we will consider how the land itself can be our greatest teacher. Participants will leave inspired by collective wisdom and practical ways to strengthen outdoor learning communities in their own contexts.

Presenters: Klara Schoenfeld, Wanda Edgar 

Come learn about a pedagogical inquiry project that focused on care and belonging with the children and more-than-human worlds at Blossoming Niños. We will share about Spill the Tea, a monthly event that brings together children, educators, and families to bridge worlds and thereby co-constructing worlds and world making within their situated context. Blossoming Niños is offered as an alternative to the current academic and non-academic discourse in early childhood education. The inquiry project resists deficit narratives and considers our inheritances as educators working within British Columbia, and thinking about care and belonging as a form of resisting harmful and unethical educational pedagogies.

Presenters: Ana Valle Rivera, Kayla Papalia, Ilam Muralidharan