SHOWCASING INSPIRING SPACES
Child Care and Early Years Professionals:
Site Tour Information
Strive and the Early Years Professional Network are currently looking for potential centres that would like to host a Site tour. Below is more information regarding Site Tours, what hosting entails and how to apply. Thank you in advance for applying!
Thank you for your interest in participating in Strive’s Site Tour initiative. Please read the following information in preparation for applying to host. These tours are not meant to create work for our community rather provide a means in which to bring visibility to the work of our community’s children and its Early Years professionals. The purpose of this document is to encourage sites to reflect on their settings and to ensure the Guiding Principles outlined below are in alignment with quality initiatives in our community.
Objectives:
To promote a vision of intentional continuous professional learning.
To be responsive to our early years’ communities vision of professional learning.
To support ongoing growth and development of Registered Early Childhood Educators and all Early Learning Practitioners.
The Professional Learning Committee (PLC) recommends that the content and delivery methods of learning opportunities are assessed and that each site supports learning that is:
Evidence Informed: Supported by best practice and current research
Multi-faceted: Dynamic and creative initiatives
Responsive: Continuously responds to the needs of our growing profession
Accountable : As early years professionals and as a community
Inclusive: Opportunities and services that can be accessed by all
Collaborative: Working together to achieve shared goals
Reflective : The process of focussed thinking to deepen our understanding of our practice
Site Tour Intention
The Early Years community is diverse and offers a variety of settings. We hope for participants to step outside of their centre and organization for a tour and meaningful dialog with early year’s colleagues. These site tours will take place in diverse early childhood settings across the city and will demonstrate various ways in which this sector observes, studies, reflects plans, collaborates and documents our lives with children.
Criteria
1) Be able to show that provincial documents are embedded into your program. (EarlyON mandates, HDLH, etc)
2) Have established pedagogical practices that support observation, documentation, collaboration and reflection.
3) Be evidence informed and able to demonstrate current best practice.
4) Demonstrate a variety of documentation in order to ensure the thinking processes of the children and Educators are visible.
5) Must be able to accommodate a group of 25-30 people, including parking and be accessible for people who may have physical limitations.
6) Dynamic and creative initiatives are a plus!
Host Responsibilities
1) Ensure you have on site Educators available for a brief introduction and for questions during the tour.
2) Be “company ready”, set the environments with invitations etc. to demonstrate the kinds of materials and experiences your site offers.
3) Provide light refreshments.
4) Return an “Experience Form” to provide insight on how this experience impacted your centre and its work, what you would offer future hosts etc.
5) Send a picture of your centre/building to Strive for marketing and promotional purposes.
6) Notify cleaning staff of the event to ensure there are no interruptions.
How to Apply
Email info@striveswo.ca highlighting the key elements of your centre – photos are welcome. Please explain why you believe your centre is a good fit for the purposes outlined in this document.
Current available dates: Jan 15 2019, March 19 2019.
Indicate if you have a preferred available date. We cannot guarantee that we can offer you your preferred date, however, we will strive to meet all needs.
We will notify all successful hosts via email after the Mentor Working Group Committee has made selections.
Prior to your tour you will be contacted by a member of the Committee where a visit will be arranged to confirm that your site is a good fit for this professional learning experience.
Thank you for your interest in this community initiative.