Empower, Extend and Grow
26 October 2024 | 9:30am to 12:30pm | Online on Zoom
Welcome to the NSW Family Day Care 2024 Educator Forum: Empower, Extend and Grow
This Forum is dedicated to celebrating the incredible dedication, creativity, and resilience of Family Day Care Educators across Australia.
Together, we will explore innovative practices, share invaluable insights, and cultivate skills that will empower us to extend our impact and grow as professionals.
Let’s come together to Empower, Extend and Grow !
Speakers
Anthony Semann
9.40am – Keynote Speaker
When we’re inspired to learn: we inspire children to learn
When we stop thinking: the children stop thinking, we explore the critical connection between an educator’s professional growth and the development of children. This session emphasises the importance of continuous learning, reflection, and engagement in professional practices to inspire and nurture children’s curiosity and critical thinking skills. Attendees will discover strategies to foster a culture of lifelong learning within themselves, ensuring that they remain effective, inspired, and responsive family day educators. Join Anthony Semann to understand how your commitment to growth directly impacts the quality of care and education you provide to the children you work with.
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Anthony is an agent of change.
After qualifying as an early childhood teacher, Anthony spent his early career working in long day care. Eager to learn as much as he could about practice and people, he built his pedagogical knowledge and developed his skills in fostering relationships.
Early on, Anthony also discovered the importance of equity and social justice as a driving force in social change.
His desire for learning remains apparent, so too does his commitment to naming inequity, shifting practice towards justice and living a life that embodies all that he preaches.
Angus Gorrie
10.20am – Workshop 1
Planning for outdoor play in your backyard
This session will cover some important aspects of outdoor play and the play that children innately seek when offered time, space and resources. Through a Playwork lens we will unpack aspects of affordance, risk, and choice needed for healthy childhood development. We will table and discuss both short term and long term ideas to support and inspire you to get the very best out of your backyard spaces, and ensure the most memorable, and beneficial childhood experiences possible.
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As a playworker and play advocate, Angus Gorrie is passionate about providing authentic play opportunities for children, wherever they may be, and pushing back against increased play deprivation and play bias. He has worked in dozens of schools, early learning centers, community groups and out of hours school care settings to improve both practice and physical space.
Angus has qualifications in Behavioural Sciences and Psychology, Playwork and is currently working towards a Masters of Medical Research investigating how play (in the broadest sense) supports the mental health of children. He also spends his day as a practitioner working in a large OSHC Adventure Playground.
It is this experience and the stories that come with working in a practical setting, combined with the theory and knowledge of study that shapes and guides Angus’s perspectives and points of view.
Jessica Staines
11.10am – Workshop 2
Practical ways to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives into every day practice
This session will unpack the new EYLF/MTOP V2.0 Principle Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives and include practical examples of how Educators can authentically embed this in their everyday practice.
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As the founder of the multiple award-winning Koori Curriculum, Jessica’s commitment to social justice, reconciliation and anti-bias practices drives her to empower educators to be more culturally aware and inclusive. She facilitates a range of professional development programs, resources and workshops for educators that help guide the inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives in early childhood curriculums.
Jessica has played many significant roles nationally and internationally in building cultural understanding, reconciliation and harmony, including as an Indigenous advisor to ABC’s Playschool and as the National Representative for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People at the World Forum Foundations Global Leaders Program.
Her work has been published in industry journals, and she has previously been a part of the AIATSIS Education Advisory Committee and HIPPY Reference group, contributing to the development of resources and programs that support Aboriginal children and families in the early years.
Jessica’s family are Wiradjuri and have lived off Country on Gadigal and Wangal land for four generations. Her family originally came from Cowra, Molong, Parkes and Wellington, but due to displacement, they were disconnected from their family and communities.
Today, Jessica lives on Darkinjung Country with her husband and two children on a peaceful bush block, and is proud to identify as a Wiradjuri woman, with connections to her local Darkinjung community.
Louise Dorrat
11.50am Workshop 3
The importance of wellbeing for FDC educators; there is only one you
Working with children and families is a challenging role and there are increasing demands placed on the Family Day Care sector. How do you have the time to look after your wellbeing when there is an endless cycle of regulations, updated frameworks, quality standards, Assessment & Rating visits, documentation, risk assessments, portfolios, meetings and these webinars? Not to mention balancing home life with your business.
We cannot manage time yet we can manage ourselves to utilise it more effectively. This session is about learning strategies to reduce the ‘busyness’ and being more assertive.
- Listen to 10 steps that will improve your wellbeing
- Gain strategies to stay fresh and inspired whilst juggling a multitude of tasks
- Stop saying ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no’
- Learn to spend time on what is important, not what is urgent
- It begins with you
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Louise has a long history of managing a broad range of early year’s services including as the Approved Provider of two Family Day Care (FDC) services and writing 3 FDC Business Manuals. Louise teaches the Bachelor of Education at a number of Universities and assisted in the establishment of the first Bush Kinder. She informs the Victorian Department on FDC matters and delivers professional development across Australia and New Zealand.
Louise experienced a time in her early childhood career of almost 40 years when it got too much. Instead of changing careers, Louise lives by these 10 steps. (M.Ed, B.Teach, Dip SSc).
Register today!
$75.00
