RESOURCES

• Watch the full webinar here
• Join our newsletter! Earn your Professional Development hours with FREE sessions delivered right to your inbox every week
• Check out the producer of ECI, Playground, the Child Care Management Software

In every classroom, on every playground, and over every shared meal, there are opportunities for healing. This immersive session invites early childhood educators and professionals to reconnect with their own wisdom, intuition, and power as everyday healers in the lives of young children.

Facilitated by educator and author Mike Browne, MBA, this webinar is more than professional development—it’s a restorative experience for the heart of our field. Together, we’ll explore how healing-centered practices can live in the routines and relationships that define early childhood care and education. Through story, breath, and reflection, participants will consider how trauma shows up in our classrooms and communities—and how safety, connection, and regulation can be offered in even the smallest interactions.

Whether you’re a teacher, cook, driver, family advocate, or administrator, your presence matters. Healing doesn’t happen in isolation—it happens in relationship. Together, we’ll remember that care is collective, and that every role in early childhood education is a healing role.

Intentions (Learning Objectives):

This session is not just about understanding trauma—it’s about:

• Restoring ourselves so we can hold space for children and families
• Honoring lived experience as wisdom
• Deepening connection, safety, and care across all roles
• Creating environments where everyone feels seen and valued
• Moving toward healing in community—through story, rhythm, reflection, and breath

RESOURCES

• Watch the full webinar here
• Join our newsletter! Earn your Professional Development hours with FREE sessions delivered right to your inbox every week
• Check out the producer of ECI, Playground, the Child Care Management Software

Play is innate, and all children have the capacity for playful selves. Yet many conventional views of play still rely on narrow developmental expectations that unintentionally exclude neurodivergent and disabled children. In this session led by Kerry Murphy (BA Hons, MSc)—author, Early Childhood Specialist, Lecturer, and Trainer—you are invited to re-explore play through a neurodiversity-affirming lens that honors the many functions and patterns of play.

You will be introduced to ideas that move beyond typical play frameworks, such as stage theory, and instead explore the diverse developmental pathways children naturally follow through play. Together, we will examine common play patterns in neurodivergent children and explore why these are valid and developmentally meaningful. We will also question neuronormative assumptions about what counts as “functional” play and recognize the depth of insight available when children are supported to play in ways that feel authentic to them.

Throughout the session, you will reflect on how neuronormativity and developmental norms can shape our interpretations of children’s actions. By engaging with practical examples, case studies, and reflective prompts, you will discover how to design play environments that are affirming, autonomous, accessible, and filled with joy, meaning, and knowledge creation.

Learning Objectives

1. To reimagine our definitions and understandings of play through a neurodiversity-informed and affirming lens.
2. To explore the influence and impact of neuronormativity on children’s play.
3. To learn about autistic play patterns as a framework for diversifying our understanding of all children’s play.
4. To be introduced to the Diverse Pathways for Early Childhood project.

RESOURCES

• Watch the full webinar here
• Join our newsletter! Earn your Professional Development hours with FREE sessions delivered right to your inbox every week
• Check out the producer of ECI, Playground, the Child Care Management Software

What does it really mean to move beyond anti-bias education in early childhood? For decades, anti-bias work has helped educators nurture children’s identities and celebrate diversity. Yet, despite these important efforts, inequities rooted in racism, ableism, eurocentrism, and monolingualism continue to show up in early learning spaces.

In this inspiring and challenging webinar, Dr. Jamie Cho and Ninderjit Gill will invite educators to look more deeply at how everyday practices can either reinforce or disrupt systems of inequity. Together, they’ll explore how justice-centered teaching can create new ways of being—where children’s cultures, languages, and identities are truly honored and where educators act as agents of change in their communities.

During this session, you will:

• Identify examples of Eurocentric practices in early childhood education.

• Reflect on how current classroom norms may reflect dominant cultural values and beliefs.

• Take intentional action steps toward centering diversity, equity, and justice.

  
  

Join us to reimagine what equity can look like in early childhood—and to strengthen your role in building programs where every child and family feels seen, heard, and valued.