A Conference for All
Planning to value and inspire our early years workforce
Let’s plan a conference we said…
It’ll be fun we said…
Who knew how much is involved in planning a conference?
Lots of people I imagine, but not us!
HEART Midlands Stronger Practice Hub is made up of a partnership of three maintained nursery school headteachers, a private nursery manager, and a childminder colleague. We all run the Hub alongside our day jobs and feel very privileged to do so, but planning a conference suddenly seemed a daunting task…
Intention
Announcing the intention of a conference was easy.
Planning a day that would be inspirational and worthwhile to all of our sector was not.
We started by listening to our colleagues.
Our childminder colleagues were telling us how isolated and undervalued they were feeling.
Our nursery colleagues were sharing how hard it is day-to-day with funding, recruitment, and the complexity of need coming through the settings.
We decided we needed to provide a day that helped nurture the wellbeing of our practitioners.
The Department for Education (DfE) Help for Early Years Providers states in its Early Years Practitioner Wellbeing Support section that “improving practitioner wellbeing practice can benefit both the individual practitioner and the setting as a whole.”
It also comments that “better practitioner wellbeing is also a factor in children’s personal, social and emotional development.”
We decided an element of our conference needed to highlight this using the aeroplane flight oxygen mask analogy; that to effectively care for others, we must first ensure our own wellbeing. This being just as important as improving practitioners knowledge and skills.
Improving the knowledge and skills of our practitioners is quite important too, however, and if people were going to take a day out to come to our conference we wanted it to have an impact for children that lasted.
We looked to the EEF’s Guide to Effective Professional Development in the Early Years which recommends five key mechanisms for effective professional development.
The first two focus on building knowledge and motivating educators so we felt that could be the aim for our days, knowledge and motivation.
We planned a mix of inspirational speakers and workshops, using evidence-based practice and ideas and it was an amazing couple of days with over 350 attendees, 75 of whom were childminders.
We laughed, we sang, we signed, we learned, we networked and we shared our love of educating our youngest learners!
Feedback
After the conference, we asked our attendees what impact the day would have on their practice. This is what they said.
“I’ve had the time to stop and focus. I will be considering how to incorporate more nurture/ language opportunities.”
“It will help me reflect and change up my practice in a positive way.”
“Renewed motivation. Better sense of self and wellbeing.”
“Learnt a lot, feel more energised and confident about my role.”
“Injection of new desire to do some training.”
“The conference motivated me to value myself as the primary resource for children’s learning, and to continue to reflect upon how I incorporate wellbeing into my daily childminding practice for both the children and me.”
“On my planning and activities, making these irresistible to the children I am looking after, I will be reviewing all my areas of practice and implementing all I have learned it was all really useful.”
That sounds like increased knowledge and motivation, we would say!
So, we did plan a conference and it was fun and 100% worth all the planning, time, and effort to see so many early years educators feeling valued and learning together.
Blog author: Sally Leese
Sally Leese is the Headteacher of Castle Vale Nursery School in Birmingham and also a Hub Lead for the HEART Midlands Stronger Practice Hub.