Welcome! We will start the day with a welcome video and a land acknowledgment from Eddy Robinson, followed by remarks from Sandy Palinski, Alex Sarchuk of Halton Region, and Becky Andrade of THRC. Attendees will also participate in a live poll to help us better understand your perspective on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the early years sector! Be sure not to miss a great start to our day!

We are kicking things off with some laughs and inspiration featuring comedian/author/speaker, Susan Stewart! With the humour is she is best known for, Susan will be sharing how changing your perspective (and re-writing the story you’re telling yourself) can help you be resilient in times of adversity or uncertainty.

Join Art Therapist Rapinder Kaur, as she takes you on an engaging, thought-provoking journey exploring how we can disrupt and reimagine ways of thinking and doing that inhibit the inherent power children are born with. Participants will leave with an understanding of liberation arts and will be offered tools on how they can think beyond diversity and inclusion by providing justice, dignity and belonging to the children their serve.

In this workshop, facilitators will explore recent studies, findings and initiatives related to race and racism in the field of early childhood. They will explore the intersectionality and complexity of Black mothering as a direct response to anti-Black racism and other forms of oppression. The workshop includes an interactive call to action for practitioners, administrators, educators and the like.

The Halton Early Years Mental Health Committee (EYMHC) is a cross-sector collaboration of service providers who work with infants/young children and their families. Research has shown that significant mental health issues can and do exist in very young children and tend to manifest as serious social, emotional or behavioural problems (Zeenah, 2009). This session will highlight the importance that you, as professionals in early childhood settings, play in promoting the mental health and well-being of all young children and their families. A child’s well-being and healthy brain development is contingent upon infants/young children having healthy relationships with their caregivers. Other important factors to consider include developing a sense of belonging and valuing and respecting an individual or family’s culture and beliefs. The session will also increase your awareness of the Halton Early Years Mental Health Toolkit itself; where to find it; highlight the many resources which can help promote professional development and explore further opportunities for embedding this content
into practice.

Focused on interactions in your workplaces, this session will engage attendees in discussions of belonging and inclusion. Grounded in an evidence based understanding of equity, diversity, and power, we will explore our understanding of how various workplace practices affect marginalized and racialized members of our organizations.

Some of the themes we will address include:

(1) the importance of building inclusive environments to support full participation of all individuals;
(2) thinking about ways to create spaces of belonging in our day-to-day work and examining challenges to inclusivity in one-to-one exchanges;
(3) understanding the role of power dynamics and its interplay with belonging.

Building diverse, equitable, and inclusive early years and childcare facilities is your aspiration. However, subtle biases can result in excluding some of the children and families that you serve. By becoming more aware of your language, actions and thought patterns, you can increase inclusion and equity in your daily interactions with children.



• Recognize specific bias that impact children

• Understand how language and behaviours impact marginalized children

• Identify and remove inclusion blockers

In this session we will explore pedagogical documentation that begins from teachers' curiosity about what is observed in children's play, ideas, and strategies. Linked to How Does Learning Happen, we will engage in conversations and think together about the questions we might raise in order to co-construct inquiry with children.

Regular physical activity is important for healthy child development. The early childhood education setting is highly influential on young children's movement behaviors. Increased effort is warranted to integrate more movement into early learning settings, given movement behaviors track from early childhood to later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. This session will cover the importance of physical activity promotion in early childhood education and how we can implement best practices to ensure sufficient integration of movement into childcare programming.

Early childhood educators’ professional growth journeys are sometimes isolating. This webinar will introduce the theory, application, and practice of critical friendships. It will invite participants to reflect on their own professional friendships and children's peer to peer relationships in a parallel process. What would be the impact of supportive professional friendship on practice? Participants should come ready to consider the possibilities and think about supporting and growing peer friendships.


Outcomes

* Learn about the theory and practice of communities of critical friendship.

* Learn about the possibilities of critical friendships.

* Learn about the possibilities of communities of practice that support voice and empowerment.