Category: Blog

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Advocacy Blog

Cupcakes and thank-you cards: What is true wellbeing for educators?

Wellbeing in the early education sector has never had a greater focus. An army of consultants are preaching its importance. Governments, peak bodies and unions are funding professional development on it. Organisations are spruiking their approaches to it. It’s hard to go a day at the moment without an email selling it, or a social media post with a group of smiling young educators holding up their cupcakes from a benevolent CEO. Meditation practices are just as likely to be sold as a required part of an educator’s professional toolkit as an understanding of theoretical perspectives. Who do you have doing your yoga “incursions”?

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Advocacy Blog Quality

Do we need a Code of Ethics for non-educator roles?

In a market-based model, the need for a Code of Ethics to underpin the work of early childhood educators is critically important. Alongside the National Quality Framework, it provides a framework for ensuring that children’s rights are prioritised, and that educators themselves can advocate for the importance of their own roles and the experiences of children.

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Blog Policy

‘Can’t you just keep politics out of centres?’: Why the answer must always be ‘no’.

The mission of this blog, and by extension a lot of my career in the early education sector, has been to hang out at the crossroads of politics, policy, advocacy and children, and see what zooms by.

Throughout the time that I’ve been speaking and writing on those issues, there’s always been a small amount of the same response: “why do you have to bring politics into it?”

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Blog Quality

New audio PD series – Exploring the NQS

I don’t do as much writing on this website as I used to, as I spend a lot of time talking about early education on The Early Education Show, and writing about it on The Framework. I wanted to add a quick post here though about a new project that I’ve really enjoyed putting together, and is out in the wild from today.

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Advocacy Blog News

In early education, men are 14 times more likely to be the CEO than be an educator

Despite only making up 3.9% of the early childhood educator workforce in “long day care” settings, men account for 54% of top leadership roles.

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Blog

It’s time for men in early childhood to advocate for women

Over the last couple of years I have turned down opportunities to speak or write about challenges for men working in early childhood.

I want to explain why, and why I will continue to do so.

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Advocacy Blog Policy

Think it’s tough being an early childhood educator now? Just wait until 2 July 2018.

I’ve talked pretty endlessly on this blog, and on the Early Education Show podcast, about my concerns about the Federal Government’s new Child Care Package (formally known as the Jobs for Families Package, which tells you quite succinctly everything you need to know about these reforms). They’re bad for children, they’re bad for the sector, and the sector should not have supported them in any way.

As we heave ourselves over the line into 2018, the year that will see the introduction of this new legislation, I wanted to highlight an issue I am worried is not getting anywhere near enough attention.

Continue reading “Think it’s tough being an early childhood educator now? Just wait until 2 July 2018.”
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Blog Quality

LIKE! SHARE! COMMENT! How we’re turning children’s learning into a social feed and why it needs to stop.

The things that are easiest to see aren’t usually the things that matter most for kids. An alphabet sign on the wall doesn’t mean kids are really engaging with reading and learning. A daily email with a photograph of your daughter is nice to have, but it doesn’t tell you much about whether the teachers are talking to her in a supportive way or sparking her curiosity about science.

– Suzanne Bouffard, The Most Important Year: Pre-Kindergarten and the Future of Our Children

I’m slowly making my way through Suzanne Bouffard’s excellent new book on how early education is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in the United States, and the passage above really stood out. It’s early on in the book, and Bouffard is discussing how quality early learning environments can be challenging to explain to families. They have pre-existing ideas of what children’s spaces should be, and are naturally more inclined to just accept things that celebrate their individual child like lovely photos.

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Advocacy Blog Policy Quality

Deleting education

Losing an advocacy battle is hard. When the Jobs for Families (JFF) legislation was passed in February this year, I was devastated. Despite spending over a year arguing my hardest that this package would fundamentally undermine children’s right to access early education, the package passed. From July 2018, the children in our country most at risk of vulnerability and with the most to gain from high-quality early learning will be locked out.

I realised this week that there might be something even harder – losing a battle we didn’t even know we were fighting.

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Advocacy Blog

Donating to ASRC in May and June

45 children still remain in some form of detention on Nauru and on mainland Australia. What we have done to these children will haunt them for the remainder of their lives.

I am not one of those courageous few who devote their every day to changing those facts. People in organisations like Save the Children, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and others.

I work in early childhood, and I write. I’m incredibly privileged and fortunate in every area of my life. I have no idea if my writing can help, but I would like to make a small gesture – even if a gesture is all it will be.

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