How would you describe pedagogical leadership? What does the daily experience of pedagogical leadership look like and feel like? While our guiding documents and emerging literature attempts to define this role, there is so much value in exploring how pedagogical leaders describe and document their work. This episode aims to capture some raw thoughts and descriptions of pedagogical leadership - in order to better understand it as a practice. It’s been a year since the last episode in Season 3,...
Why do we document? How do we document? What do we document? When do we document? When does documentation become pedagogical? What activates pedagogical documentation? What about pedagogy inherently documents? What routines and rituals facilitate and sustain my reflective, responsive, relational documentation practice? What are the precursors to creating stories about our practice that can reveal and illuminate our communal thinking, children's insights, and the big picture questi...
I've spiralled my way back to this question with a desire to unpack why I feel some tension around the terminology of "emergent" curriculum. Is curriculum the active agent? Does it reveal itself? If so, what role do educators play in taking up the passively emerging information? How do we use our interpretations of our experiences with children to respond and expand upon their learning? And what the heck do ukuleles have to do with this conversation?? Join me in wondering about an educator's ...
In response to questions about celebrating Halloween, I noticed an opportunity to explore why and how we celebrate in early learning communities. From thinking about relationships with families, to upholding integral rituals, to fostering cultural competency, to honouring what a seasons invites, and creating a community protocol for making decisions, this episode documents my journey of reading literature, taking questions to our staff meeting, and capturing our thinking. By wandering t...
I'm embedded within the September welcoming routines and rituals, and it's caused me to reflect on building relationships through the lens of parallel practice. As a pedagogical leader and course instructor, I wonder about the experiences afforded to educators and students that foster or erode connection, and how these experiences mirror that which we hope children and families experience. Play along with me here if you're curious about designing experiences that support congruency betw...
I've been curious about mentorship for several years, and I'm only just starting to connect my histories and futures of mentorship with the role(s) of healing, learning, and living well throughout the human experience. Wonder with me, here... Support the show
In this episode, I capture an ah-ha moment where I challenge the all-knowing assumptions of research by claiming its limitations, and instead leaning into the potential of pedagogical inquiry. I reflect on the constraints I sense as a researcher, and the freedom I can embrace within pedagogy. I briefly reflect on my graduate school research to highlight how research feels close-ended, contained and methodological (in order to be reliable and reproducible) whereas pedagogy, while still being a...
What does communal growth require? What questions will we pursue together? Why? And what impact do we notice our pursuits have on our community? Support the show
From literally exploring movement across our program to being moved emotionally, and to reflecting on how movement during the spring of 2023 is very timely, this episode stretches the question "what moves us?" to its edges. The episode captures my interpretations of children and educators exploring movement and what led us to generating this question as the title for our art exhibit this year. A link to this episode was posted at the art exhibit for students, faculty, staff, and families to l...
Sometimes we are moved into shifts. And that is what happened here. In this bonus episode I discuss how, in the process of refining my values, vision, intentions, and ethos within this space, I was moved to reconsider the name of the this podcast/journey. While play is embedded within my values, I realized I required a new name that opened me towards new possibilities and propelled me to take up the quest within the questions. Welcome to Pursuing Questions, formerly known as The Playful...
Pauses appear to be the opposite of so many scripts we hold as a collective society. They may counteract efficiency, fail to demonstration meaningful progression towards a goal, are sometimes viewed as stagnation, and often are difficult to represent within outcome-driven agendas. Here, I offer that pause can offer possibility, and aim to describe how a pause can be extremely generative to our well-being and pedagogically. Pauses create space when there appears to be none, and demonstrate tha...
In this mini-episode I capture several thoughts I've had over the past several years that have led me to absolutely revere spirals as metaphors in my personal and professional life. I'd like to give a generous shout-out to the content creators of the music in this episode. For show notes and transcript, visit: https://playfulpedagogies.ca/2023/04/04/spiralized-experiences-what-can-the-shape-of-a-spiral-offer-us-within-our-human-experience/ Support the show
Welcome to my version of "season 2" of this playful podcast. I took a long, playful, pedagogical, and personal pause and now I'm here again to revisit many of the topics discussed in the first 10 episodes. I'm excited to offer these ideas here, but even more excited to hear your thoughts on these topics... so reach out! Let's generously share our wonderings, questions, ideas, pursuits, intentions, dreams, and visions for a playful future. For show notes and transcript, visit: https://playful...
Victoria, owner of Side by Side Consulting Services, is a skilled thinking partner for early childhood educators and brings many rich experiences and wisdom to this 2-part conversation. In this episode, and part 1, we engage is an authentic, reflective, and open conversation to explore our experience with, and our ideas about young children's experiences with art, music, and dance. We discuss parallel practices of play, the importance of building relationships with high quality materials, and...
Welcome back to a playful episode about play! While I intended for this episode to be about play theorists, the benefits of play, and how play and learning are interconnected, I ended up taking a walk and capturing some recent reflections from my own practice and experience about how I value and notice play, lately. Here, I share my hot takes on keeping play alive in our language and observations, what I've been learning about Anishinaabe perspectives about animals (and how that, to me, feels...
What happens when a Human Resources manager (mom), a student teacher (middle sibling), and a grad student (eldest sibling) FaceTime for 5 minutes? Well, when it's my family, we start theorizing about inclusion. What started as a spontaneous video call, turned into a deep conversation that challenged what we thought about inclusion, and called us to rethink how we have experienced inclusion of disability. This prompted us to hit the record button to capture our wonderings, and it also pr...
In this episode, I had the great pleasure of chatting with outdoor education 'guru' Bob Henderson. As an experienced educator, guide and writer, Bob exudes wisdom when discussing of ways being with people outdoors. Through this conversation Bob and I find many not-so-surprising connections between my own experience as a student and Bob's experience as an educator, despite Bob never teaching me. We cover everything from adventure narratives to play as cultural defiance to the value of baking c...
In this solo episode I reflect on my experience attending the fall conference held by the Council of Outdoor Educators of Ontario (COEO). I wander through reflections and realizations that I had during the conference and since, covering themes of what 'belonging' means and to whom, the limits of the English language, and my obsession with spirals. Note: this episode was recorded at the beginning of October 2021. Support the show
In this solo episode I reflect on the fight that ECEs are in to professionalize our work and gain respect by leveraging away from being considered as glorified babysitters. I wander through wonderings about different types of care and education across time, space, and cultures, and ask questions that feel unsettling to my own identity as an ECE. Note: this episode was recorded at the beginning of Sept 2021. Support the show
In this solo episode, I (finally!) discuss what play is! I challenge my own vision of play, getting along, and sharing. I also highlight other folks' knowledge, such as definitions of play, types of play, schemas of play, and rhetorics of play. This episode is rooted in early childhood education and care perspectives on play, but I make links to how this understanding can be extended lifelong. Support the show