Last week, our Educational Leaders from each Sparrow Early Learning Service attended the Semann & Slattery Educational Leader Conference across Western Australia, Victoria, and Queensland.
At Sparrow Early Learning, we are committed to our entire team’s personal development and see this conference as an important part of our Educational Leader’s ongoing learning and development. This year’s theme was Connecting Practice to Theory: Finding Ideals and Ideas of Possibility.
Here is some of the fantastic feedback we received from our Educational Leaders and team after attending the conference.
“I found the Educational Leader conference to be a wonderful and enriching experience. I took away many great ideas to implement within my service and to share with my fellow Educators. I’m grateful for the opportunity for growth the conference offered me.” Sandstone Point.
“I loved attending this conference and really connected with Dr. Deborah Harcourt and Anthony Seaman. I loved his quote, “Innovate don’t imitate”. “Name what you want, visualise it but chase it,” and “1 project 1 year”. Innovation and pushing past the present ways are the keys to future growth and support for children and educators. It is the reflection of what was, what is and what could be that will take us and our community to the next step”. Pollyanne from Pacific Pines.
“I thoroughly enjoyed the Educational Leader conference; I feel that it was very insightful and inspiring. I am really looking forward to diving deeper with the team to do better things (as Anthony said, “Don’t do things better, do better things”) Jayde Bell from Thornlie.
“As a new Ed Leader stepping up, it was really engaging and a great introduction to the role. The speakers provided insightful perspectives on fostering the growth of the children in our care as well as nurturing our Educators. I found the entire experience extremely beneficial and thoroughly enjoyed learning from other educational leaders from my region. It was a lovely way to meet everyone and gain a better understanding of what the Educational Leader role looks like at other Sparrow services.” Shannon Howieson from Karana Downs.
“I took away a few important quotes from this conference. One of which included allowing children to develop their social responsibility and offering them a space to be. Building a basket of trust is critical for team involvement within the service.” Racheal from Greenwood.
“My main takeaway was from Kirsty Liljegren. Kirsty asked about what metaphors best describe our service. She used the example of a DNA – a double helix. On one side, you have the families and on the other side, you have the children. The strands in the middle represent us. We bring everything together to form a DNA. Just like DNA, we coexist and depend on one another.” James Law from Swanbourne.
“I absolutely loved the Conference. I feel like as an Ed Leader, I took so much away to pass on to my team and can’t wait to see the changes we can make together.” Brooke Makin from Buderim.
“I found this event wonderful. The speakers were so passionate, their thinking around critical reflection and we as educators need to come together and work as a team discussing ways we can develop and think of best practices for the benefit of the children was inspiring. The biggest aspect I took from this was to pick one thing and develop this before moving on. This can take weeks, months even years and still not be perfect, but it’s the dedication and effort that counts towards making a difference.” Allana Graham from Warwick.
“I had an absolutely amazing and insightful experience at the Ed Leader Conference. It was incredibly motivating, and I discovered some incredible techniques that I am now using. Thank you so much!” Sarah Molloy from Carrum Downs.
“My biggest takeaway from the Conference was around our Partnerships and alliances with families, inviting and including them to be part of their children’s learning and development, and being more inclusive and physically present. Another key factor was knowing how to motivate and energise the team. How do we marvel at our educators, through inquiry, thinking together, accessing collective intelligence, liberating, and empowering one another? Desiree Lachicoree from Bentley.
” A relaxing and fun day listening to passionate speakers sharing their wisdom. It was thought-provoking and gave me new motivation to reflect on many things. A valuable experience, thank you Sparrow for the opportunity to attend!” Leigh Webster from Seville Grove.
“I was one of the fortunate ones who attended the conference the second year in a row and have embraced and taken onboard all the inspiring information that was provided to me during the informative session. The Educational Leader Conference has provided me with in-depth knowledge about how persistence and perseverance are the key components for an educational leader in daily practices. The key speakers took us through their passionate journeys and reflected on how relationships and documentations are scaffolded into a child’s early years to foster lifelong skills. The session also covered topics such as collaboration and inclusiveness that are very important to create the culture of learning and growing together as a team. Kelly Goodsir was an amazing speaker, and I was blown away by the documentation that she showed everyone. This is something that I will be working towards implementing at Wyndham Waters.” Ashika Sharma from Wyndham Waters.
“It was such an amazing opportunity to be part of Semann & Slattery’s conference and was very insightful to learn how to be different. It took us to the depth of understanding each child and how our programming can be more child lead. We were able to learn different ways of collecting data techniques and how teams worked together to achieved what they goal for. It was inspiring to learn to pause and reflect on our ideas and thoughts to make meaning, have conversations within the team that count and reflect on playful inquiry what it looks, feels, and sounds like! Can’t wait to share these reflections and learning within our team.” Manveet from Ellenbrook.
The Sparrow Early Learning teams felt inspired and grateful to have the time for learning and growing. They have come back with so many new ideas and strategies they can put into place with both their team and with the children and their families.
Interested in joining the Sparrow Early Learning family? Visit our careers page today for more information here.