This month, we are reflecting on trust. Specifically, learning to trust young children. Check out this month's guided reflection prompts, and stay tuned for short videos that go deeper. Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Once again, I am unable to host my live while traveling. Stay tuned for the revised live schedule for the remaining four ECEC values! In the meantime, you can find all the previous lives by clicking on the link below or the Linktree in my bio! https://www.djonesconsultant.com/embracingececvalues #EmbracingECECValuesAsResistance #FreeToTeach #LiberatedToLearn #fyp

Unfortunately last week’s live was postponed due to technical difficulties. So this week I’m hosting two live discussions. Join me at 6 pm EDT this Wednesday, July 1, at 6 pm EDT for a discussion on ECEC Value 7: Supporting children’s development through Cari g and meaningful relationships with families and caregivers. ECEC Value 8: Strengthening collaboration and communication between families, caregivers, and educators. 🌸Who gets to be an expert on a child? 💮In too many early childhood settings, that question has one answer: the credentialed professional. Families are informed, updated, and occasionally consulted. But rarely are they treated as essential partners whose knowledge is irreplaceable. 🏵️If they’re not seen as partners they easily become the problem. 🪻Children live in families, communities, and cultures that shape who they are long before they arrive in any classroom. Educators who ignore that context are working with an incomplete picture. Families who feel excluded from their child's learning experience disengage and children feel that disconnection. 🌻Genuine collaboration between families, caregivers, and educators is not a best practice checkbox. It is a developmental necessity. 🌼I believe in building that collaboration. Not as a program or a policy, but as a professional stance rooted in respect. 🍂If this is how you approach your relationships with families, or how you wish you could, Free to Teach = Liberated to Learn is your community. Scan the QR code to join! 🦋And I’m thrilled to announce I will be joined by special guest Kisa Marx for my live discussion on how to embrace this value as a form of resistance at 7 pm EDT Wednesday, July 1st!

I'm having technical difficulties and have to postpone tonight's live.

ECEC Value 7:Supporting children's development through caring, meaningful relationships with families and caregivers. 💐What if the most important thing you do as an early childhood educator has nothing to do with curriculum? 🌹Research is unambiguous on this point. The quality of relationships between educators and children, between programs and families, between caregivers and the communities they serve, is the single most powerful factor in early childhood outcomes. 🥀Not the curriculum. Not the assessment tool. Not the literacy program. The relationship. 🌺And yet professional development, policy mandates, and program evaluations continue to prioritize everything but relationships. Educators are trained to deliver content, manage behavior, and document progress, while the relational work that actually drives development is treated as instinct rather than craft. 🌷Meaningful relationships with families and caregivers are not peripheral to early childhood practice. They are the practice. 🪷If you know this and you are tired of systems that don't, Free to Teach = Liberated to Learn is your community. Scan the QR code to join! Join me at 7 pm EDT on Wednesday, June 24th, for a discussion on how to embrace this value as a form of resistance.