Our vision for children

We view children as meaningful partners in the learning process, bringing their spirit of wonder and curiosity to every occasion. We want children to know, feel and see their remarkable potential. We will always be responsive as a top priority to each child’s wellbeing and regard our trusting relationships as an important building block in each child’s learning journey.

 

We honor children’s voices, ideas and theories and will encourage them to speak up and out on the things that matter to them. We embrace children as agents of change who deeply care about their environment and the world around them. We honour the heart, spirit and mind of each child.

 

We value these practices:

• Holding space for children’s wellbeing and emotional health
• Building children’s capacity to be courageous, resilient and persistent
• Embracing slow time so we can be generous listeners
• Engaging with children’s inquiry using questions to explore their ideas and theories
• Harnessing the process of researching and learning together
• Fostering the joy of uninterrupted play, playfulness and connection
• Providing time to imagine, create, transform, take apart and recreate.

 

Our vision for families and community

We believe in the practice of partnering. For us this means creating a context for meaningful connection with families and within our community. We value the rich and diverse perspectives of families and always seek to develop a shared understanding. Inviting families to be decision makers requires a level of vulnerability and openness to which we commit. Designing policies and practices around shared perspectives means we will always reflect our families and community in our approach. Through our culture of welcoming families, we foster compassionate and caring communities.

 

We value these practices:

• Welcoming families with a spirit of generosity and hospitality
• Providing time to share stories revealing insights into the lives of children – time to linger
• Engaging in genuine exchanges where the traditional roles of parent and teacher are reimagined
• Providing space to gather, connect and share through meaningful events
• Inviting differing perspectives to shape our policies and procedures
• Being involved in our community in meaningful ways.

 

 

Our vision for our teaching team

Our teaching team is a collective who are inspired by their work and the possibilities of making an impact within the early childhood profession. We make a commitment to always dive deep, connecting our practice to theory and challenging the norms. We make a pledge to children to safeguard their early childhood experience through long periods of play, cultivating their ideas and advocating for their rights as learners. We are drawn towards the idea of reimagining the way we approach pedagogy and documentation, so it tells the story of learning with and alongside children and families,

and makes this visible for the people within our community. We are researchers and critical thinkers who embrace change as an opportunity to grow as professionals and as a team.

 

We value these practices:

• Listening deeply and to follow the big ideas in children’s play
• Engaging educators in research as a culture to disrupt, inform and pivot our ways towards more contemporary pedagogy in early childhood
• Building our self-awareness about how our beliefs and perspectives shape what we notice, pay attention to and value over what we don’t,
• considering the impact of this on how we teach and plan our programs.
• Appreciating the many perspectives of our teaching team and embracing complexities of teaching and learning
• Make learning visible in ways that reveal processes, thinking and questions.

 

Our vision for the environment

We honour our environment as an important influencer in children’s learning. The way we use time and organise our day keeps children’s wellbeing and learning needs at the heart of all we do. Children learn whilst experiencing care for land, plants, animals and people. We believe through acknowledging Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our practices and program we are better able to communicate and engage more meaningfully within our community and beyond.

 

We prepare our physical spaces with materials and resources that create a context for deep investigation and inquiry whilst also creating a safe emotional space for learning. This often means we commit to informed risk taking and messy play as part of our programs – children learn through being involved. We look to invite the natural world into our everyday programs.

 

We value these practices:

• Honoring and learning with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• Nurturing a connection to the natural world is deeply important to us – we don’t just teach about nature we learn together within it
• Providing opportunities to engage in personal, social and environmental responsibility
• Engaging with ideas of sustainability and caring for our environment
• Embrace the gift of living things to teach us and be integrated in our programs
• Inviting invention through the use of open-ended materials.