Parents learning about Play

It has been a busy week for SRCC Parents with 3 centres having their Fall Family Meetings.

Terra Nova invited parents to experience and understand the use of loose parts at the centre.  The children had left some impressive creations for their parents who, after considering them, made some changes and left the children with very exciting new creations to use.  Through this process parents experienced the work of collaborating, negotiating for and manipulating materials and exchanging ideas.   It was a rich and deep night of dialogue and new understandings and appreciation.  Each family brought some loose parts to add our inventory - thank you so much TNCC families! 

Cook Rd invited families in to share with them how the children have been experiencing a sense of belonging, learning about acceptance, and discovering diversity in their program.  Their intimate gathering enhanced a deep feeling of connectedness to the centre and to the work happening.  Honest and deep questions were asked and staff were able to foster a deeper understanding of the children they work with.  The parents collaborated with one another and painted beautiful art to share with the centre and the children - learning lessons of sharing space and materials as they did so (a parallel to what the children do everyday!)

Bowling Green Rd Toddlers invited families to explore magna tiles, blocks and recycled materials and the ways these are used by their children in the program. Of course toddler parents were very interested in how to manage toddlers and amazed at the work they do at the centre when at home they can be challenging.  Toddlers are such complex humans - equal parts competence and challenges!  

We are so appreciative of the parents who come out and engage with us in these evenings.  We want to share as much as we can with you about these important times the children are having at the centres.  We want to work in partnership with you and give you a window into the competence and creativity of your children.  

We have found these meetings to be rich and deep and connecting for Educators and Parents alike.  We'd love to hear from you about your experiences and other things you might like to meet about?

Thank you for partnering with us to "Change the world by honouring childhood"

Nicky

Communities of Practice

We believe this at the SRCC - that learning and teaching should be fully integrated and that the best Educators are the ones who see themselves as artists and scientists and researchers, always on the quest to satisfy curiosity - their and/or the children's. 

When we look at how to offer professional development that meets the needs of our Educators we look at what we want to offer the children.  Then we step back and ask "what skills do we need more of, or to hone?".  Then we work together to offer opportunities for those skills to flourish.

One way we have used over the years is Communities of Practice.

A community of practice is a group of people who share something in common or want to learn a common subject together.

We have had two rounds of Communities of Practice in the past with the whole SRCC and have found them to be powerful in advancing our curriculum and connecting Educators from all our programs.

This time our curriculum leadership team identified 3 topics about which our Educators are expressing a desire to deepen their knowledge and skills.

So in the height of summer we offered all Educators the opportunity to voluntarily sign up for one of the following communities of practice:

1. The art of writing documentation
2. The Educator as Researcher
3. Exploring Representational Thinking

These would be 4 sessions over 4 Wednesday evenings - 2 hours per session. 

18 Educators jumped at the chance to dive into their own learning. We quickly had a waitlist but intentionally wanted to keep the groups intimate in the hope that good discussion would be possible.

As with most SRCC events we gather over food at 6:15pm all together. We catch up, chat, collaborate and nourish our bodies.  This may not look like Professional Development but the community building that happens over a meal strengthens collaboration across the SRCC and that is key to our success.

We then break into our communities and spend some time exploring the topic and thinking deeply.  

All participants are sent out with tasks to be accomplished before the next week.

Jennifer is leading the Teacher as Researcher group, Helen the Representational Thinking group and I am leading the Writing group.

It is immensely gratifying to see our Educators from across all 5 of our Centres committed to investing in their own competencies and being willing to stretch into new thinking and practice. This commitment makes us a stronger organisation and helps us to more fully live into our vision and values.

My hats off to Jennifer and Helen for all their preparation and to every Educator who has shown up physically and intellectually in the pursuit of excellence
we all share.

Way to go #TeamSRCC

We will run these same sessions in the Fall/Winter to accommodate those Educators who were unable to get into these sessions.

Parent Perspectives

On our 10 year journey into the world of emergent / responsive / Reggio-inspired curriculum with the guidance of our colleagues at Hilltop Children's Centre, London Bridge Children's Centres and Ann Pelo we have have changed so many things, learned new ways of working alongside the children and facilitating their investigations and explorations. 

One of the things we had really not yet mastered was inviting parents into those investigations to understand what their children were doing at the centre and what their thinking is about that and how they might help us with new insights and participate in a meaningful way in the investigation and help us deepen the curriculum for the children.

We worried parents wouldn't want to take the time to dive into this work with us.  We wanted to honour their perspectives and have them participate in a meaningful way but we know how busy they are. 

So we didn't do it. 

But in 2017 Jennifer and I decided that we needed to be bold  - we really wanted to build stronger relationships with parents and build the SRCC Community. 

So we challenged all our programs to hold a Family Meeting before the end of summer 2017.

Two programs were ready and to go very quickly and last night both the West Cambie Infant and Cranberry Spies work group families came into the programs and learned what their children have been working on, gave us their perspectives and thinking,  and left something for the children and program before they left. 

Cranberry Spies
A group of children at Cranberry have been playing "Spies" for a while.  Educator Dominique paid close attention to the play and what was driving it.  Why is being a spy so exciting?  What can spies get up to that regular children cannot?  What tools do spies need? 

She shared her observations and documentations with the parents of the spies and they told us it helped them make sense of what the children were playing at home.  After a lively sharing of documentation and conversation the parents were invited to make some spy gadgets to leave in the classroom to surprise the spies.  As the gadgets took shape there was more conversation and the topic of a future discussion emerged.  It was a powerful night of collaboration and thinking and discussion and fun.  

West Cambie Infants
As the babies language is emerging the staff have been exploring a range of language and literacy experiences with the infants using a variety of materials.  They invited parents into this story and explained their intentions around their work and  what they had discovered about the children in this group and about language development.  They then offered parents the opportunity to write a story to their child using the photos they had been requested to bring in.  The stories were up in the room this morning when the children arrived this morning and they were so intrigued and delighted!  A great night of mutual understanding and relationship building with and among parents.

We hope the parents who participated found the experience valuable and we hope that when other parents are invited to participate you will do so with curiosity and enthusiasm as we work together to "Change the world by honouring childhood".