Walk with me: A journey of distributed leadership and inclusion

Debbie Yates

Hello and welcome to the session: ‘Walk with me: a journey of distributed leadership and inclusion.’ My name is Debbie Yates I'm the Be You Manager in the Early Childhood Australia team, and I'm here today to help facilitate this session which will be led by Amy Shine. Amy, would you like to introduce yourself to our delegates today?

Amy Shine

Thank you, as Deb just said my name is Amy Shine. I’m the Director at Forbes Preschool. I’ve worked at Forbes Preschool for 12 years. It’s been an amazing journey, amazing journey, and I'm really excited to share with you where we've come from over the last 12 years and tell you a little bit more about myself and some practical ideas of belonging and inclusion. Yes, so I've had lots of experience in rural and remote communities, and it's led me to the path where I am today.

Debbie Yates

Thanks Amy, and we’re really looking forward to hearing some more about your journey today. I would like to start with an Acknowledgement, so, Amy, would you like to start by sharing the land, which you're sitting on today?

Amy Shine

So today I’m meeting you all on the beautiful Wiradjuri Land and I'm very excited to welcome and, and pay my respects to Elders past and present on Wiradjuri.

Debbie Yates

Thank you, and I’d like to Acknowledge that I am sitting on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, and also acknowledge that today as a virtual event we have people joining from many Lands, so I encourage people to share their own acknowledgement, including the Traditional Custodians of the Land you're sitting on and joining on, in the chat box if you'd like to.

So, Amy, would you start us off today by sharing the, the things you'll be covering today in our session?

Amy Shine

Yep, so today we’ll be considering inclusion through family partnerships, creating safe and respectful environments that promote belonging and inclusion, cultural safety and what that looks like for us and what it looks like for you, and how we've come up with our mission and vision and strategic plan here at Forbes, that encompasses, I guess, our cultural safety.  We’ll also consider how focus on diversity and inclusion supports wellbeing and of course we'll tie it all in with some distributed leadership because it takes a team to be able to deliver a really good, high quality inclusion program.

Debbie Yates

I really love that last element, Amy, about talking about how it takes a team to do these things. We can't have it all sitting on one person, so having that element, the elements of distributed leadership and everyone taking ownership and agency and how you support that is really important, I think, as well.

Amy Shine

Yes, I think, it's really much about considering your trainees and your young staff to your more experienced staff. I was only actually, was talking to my staff about this yesterday. It's you know, everyone is equally valued and if we can all do that, it’s great advocacy for our own service and within our community.

So, I will keep going. I've got a little slide there for you about walking together. We are partners with our families, our community and we need to ensure that we support best long-term outcomes for our children. So I believe with this, this quote that we've got up. It's about, you know, parents are the child's first leader, first teacher. So really need to pay respect to that and pay respect to that, we need to walk hand in hand. We're not, we're not the experts, parents are. We need to go on this journey together and I think that's something that I can't, just doesn't resonate enough with me that, that walk in front, don't walk behind, let's walk together. Because this is a big journey and I was only saying to another service today, that had visited our preschool. The complexities that we’re seeing today are so much more complex than what we probably saw five to ten years ago, so we do really need to be in this together. Might just move on to the next slide.

To me that’s really thinking about our first impressions as well. So, the picture that you can see up there is a local Aboriginal artist. She’s a young girl that actually went to our preschool and she's now grown into an amazing artist and one of her art works actually is up in the Pinterest office in Sydney. She’s awesome.

So she came in and she did some work and communication with our community, our Aboriginal educators, our children and we talked about our journey and about who we are and that's the first thing you see when you walk you into our preschool is that artwork and her artwork is distributed throughout the preschool as well.

Because I remember when I first moved here twelve years ago. One of my friends was an Aboriginal lady and she came into the preschool and we just, had an Aboriginal artwork up and she said, gosh, this is the first time I’ve walked in to this preschool and felt like I really belong in that I have a place in here. And to me that really resonated because we want a place where people walk in and it feels like a sense of home, in a sense, I can see myself and I can see my family here. And it doesn't have to be hard, it doesn't have to be expensive.

I mean we’ve done some amazing things here but to start with it was simple. Little things like employment of Aboriginal people; changing a bit of the environment that we had and adding some pieces and they were not expensive. Adding some nature, just making people feel that real sense of welcome in their space that they came. It’s reflective of our community. Also artwork that we actually do have in our space is local. So we've got a local, just outside my office, so I’m sitting in my beautiful office in Forbes, is a piece of art that an Indian lady made and it's her, and her daughter. Her daughter playing in India, but it reflects just different parts of our community. So, really think about the first impression that people get as soon as they walk into your space.

So, our next slide is about our family partnerships and it's about this family walking through our door and I always say, I said this a lot of times, if people have heard me speak before, you might have heard this.  We treat everyone all the same, but different. We know, we have really respectful relationships and it doesn't matter if you’re the mayor or if you’ve recently been in jail or because we have quite a few families like that. It doesn't matter who they are. Everyone is given a really respectful ‘hello’ and it is meaningful and it’s authentic and I heard another phrase just recently about ‘be interested don't be interesting’. I think when we’re genuinely interested in our families and who they are, and who their children are, and show delight in them you can't fake that, and I think that gives people just such a strong sense of wellbeing.

We want to lift people, we want to lift our community and we're all here for the same outcome. So I think by giving that initial welcoming it just spreads and, and word-of-mouth spreads so we want everyone to feel like this is their space because we are a Community Preschool. Or if you're, even if you are a private service we're all here with fam, like it's a family friendly environment. So we want to, want to give that vibe to everyone who walks in the door that we’re absolutely delighted in seeing you, and your children are so important but you are so important to us too as a family, and our educators and our community members. We have lots of community members in our preschool, including child and family health nurses and domestic violence groups. You name it, they’re here, because it's such a welcoming place and if you can create that welcoming space and it's not about a physical space it’s about working with what you've got. You’ll see great outcomes. So next…

Debbie Yates

Sorry, I was just about to say how we often see those first entry points. Sometimes there's a place to share policy information or administrative kind of information so I think like saying, just really reflecting on what does this first entry point, what is it saying and communicating to our families  and to their children and young people that are walking through the door. I think that’s such an important thing to reflect on and really, really can set the tone for what happens in the next, in that first five minutes; can set the tone for what happens after.

Amy Shine

Absolutely, and even like, as we know there is regulatory documents we do have to have on display as people walk through the door, but we’re really thoughtful about the way that they are displayed as well. And decluttering our environment which I’ll talk a little bit more about later. But it's having that space and you can stop and say hello and have that time and, yeah, pay respect.

In the next little slide, you can see one of our spaces that we have created in our hallway. Also, when we designed this space, we’ve only been in this preschool for, since 2016. Gosh, the years fly by.

Debbie Yates

But yes, that's quite a while now isn’t it?

Amy Shine

It still feels relatively new. We created, we didn't want to feel like you walk down a hallway, and as I say we are very fortunate that we got to purpose build our service. But you can still do these things in different ways. But we created a space that is wide enough and it doesn't feel like you're standing in a hallway so that the parents especially pre COVID…We wanted, we have lounges and adult seating so the parents could sit and have a yarn with each other or with us.

And I love there is a little candle there. I do love a little candle because I think our smell, and I guess it's about getting to know families as well. If we had a child with an allergy or that was intolerant to some sort of smells obviously that wouldn't be happening. At the moment, we can, that will come and go. But fresh flowers, flowers that are actually brought to us by a parent because we’d helped them out with their child. But you know you can pick some greenery from your garden but have spaces that are respectful and welcoming and home like. Where people do want to sit and stay. It’s COVID I’m probably not, our open door policy isn’t as open because we did reflect that our families with separation anxiety, was a lot less when we had to be quicker. A bit more of a kiss drop off: kiss and drop. But we’re slowly getting back to that and that will come and go but we want to have some really nice spaces that are really thoughtful so that we can have respect, sit and have a chat.

So next we’ve done a lot of work with our community, with our parents, our management committee and talking with our children and just reflecting on who we are. So we've come up with quite a simple mission and vision there and that's about everyone is welcome, everyone belongs, is our absolute go to slogan that you can see there in our logo.

We’ve done a lot of work with branding as well. That's not so much about branding and selling our service because that’s not certainly what we’re about. It’s having that sense of belonging within the community as well. So the children are out at the supermarket and they see someone or a friend with her little shirt on with that logo. They have that sense of: you're my mate; you from that place that I'm from. We’re just trying to really build that community feeling up with our preschool. We did employ someone – an external contractor, to come and work with us regarding our mission and vision, because we're educators and we know what we want to do and we know how to, I guess, work with our families and children, but we wanted to develop a really, really professional document with our strategic plan and our mission and values.

It's now actually framed up in our entrance as you walk in because we want to keep that alive and we  want people to know who we are and what we stand for. And I think that's really about advocacy and we want our community to understand why early education is so important. We are, actually quite, have a high standing in our community and people are coming to us, including our local council and high school and primary schools asking for our feedback, and they want our input into community decisions. And I think that's because we have really professionalised who we are, while still keeping lots of fun, and we've a pretty relaxed vibe around here. But I do believe there’s times we need to professionalise who we are and what we do because what we do is so important in the long-term outcomes for our community.

If we can have a really quality place for early education, we need our community to know that we are the most important people in these lives and we know that the first five lives of a child’s life is so crucial. In our high school, so fortunate that our principal is just the biggest advocate for early education and he’s like, no, we need to go back to them, go back to them. So you can do it, professionalise yourself and have a really clear vision of who we are and share it with your community.

Debbie Yates

I think that the elements you're talking about there too is that, that the, the process of actually developing your mission and vision happened collectively so it wasn't one person’s voice or two or three people's voice. It was actually a collective process that bought on board, you know, parents and staff and children's voices as well.

Amy Shine

Absolutely and when we have days like that, so we had a, we had actually quite a number of days but the last day when we collated all of our information we held it in a space that was removed from preschool. It was a really respectful space. We supplied morning tea and lunch because we had some external stakeholders come and be part of that process as well. So I think it’s not just like, just let’s get this document done and let’s just throw something together.

Whenever I have a meeting with, even if it's a meeting with couple of the staff, I like my space to be thoughtful and respectful.  Not in a staff room full of clutter where, oh my gosh, we’ll just move everything off the table and will have this meeting. I feel we should really, pay respect, you know. We are really important people and we are educators and don't be scared to, to be professional and to think you're amazing because it’s infectious and we are amazing. So yeah, I think it's really important if you do that you show your staff that you can do this and you can be a leader in your community and you can actually help others and our families and I want our families… I’ve actually had a bit of a shift in talks with Early Childhood Australia about this. For me the families are first, and I guess that’s because I’m a non-teaching Director as well. If they feel this sense of trust and belonging and their children see that, then our children will feel safe with us regardless. We are safe people but the children need to see that their families feel trust and are safe with us first.

So we’ve got a reflective question next. I just want you to think about what, just so I want to talk about cultural safety, and what that looks like for us, but I want you to think about what that looks like for you and how does that look in your space. If you can, add that in the chat box.

I do a little bit of research and a bit of reading and I have been using Be You products for a long time but I reflected again just recently and looked at the Mentally Healthy Communities and the discussions about positive and respectful information, relationships. I think the trust information for me is just so vital and having that trusting relationship does build positive, respectful, reciprocal relationships and that's about having a culturally safe environment. So when people trust us they’ll trust others, and in our opinion, that will make a difference.

So another story that we were just talking about today is we, we also run an NDIS program in our preschool and that's only been here for three years but our families come to us and they’re like: We have a lot of Aboriginal, low-income families and for us to go them and say your child might need some speech therapy, or an NDIS plan, or whatever it might be. That’s a pretty big thing, a pretty big thing for any family but they’ll look at me or look at one of the other girls and go: oh I don’t know, what would you do? Do you trust these people and because we trust these people and they’re under our roof they’re okay about it. And now we've actually seen such a shift and families are coming in and saying to us, my child might need speech therapy. Can you have a look? That’s because we have developed such trusting relationships. A shift in how families work with our other community members - is just amazing.

Like when I first moved here some of the staff didn't know, what does an OT do; what does a speech therapist do; who do I refer. And the shift we’ve seen because they're actually working under our roof, with not only educators, but with our families wanting to access the services is just amazing. And our schools, we work closely with the schools and we were actually at the public school here yesterday with the kindergarten, reviewing the Best Start results. That’s what we said, to have these trusting and open relationships just means so much when they get to school, because we can have all of that in place by the time the children get to school. And have much better outcomes, and we've already got those things in place for the school so it’s easy for the school just to move forward with that. It's great for the school too, for funding wise, if they need to have a diagnosis or anything we can have all that sorted by the time they get into school.

I don’t know if anyone’s written in about how they have a culturally safe environment or?

Debbie Yates

I’m not, I can’t quite, not so much at the moment. No, the chat’s a little bit quiet at the moment but yes. I think that’s excellent, and just, I hear you regularly reflecting on the fact that, you know, Forbes Preschool can’t do this work on their own so it is actually those connections with other community professionals, with other organisations, with the other local education settings so the, the primary schools, are that actual community element, is what's actually building the strength, and building the trust and building that cultural safety across the board.

Amy Shine

One hundred percent. And it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of time, and I think it's really important that it's not just one or two people doing it and having an environment like that, it's, it's everyone is on that journey together.

Debbie Yates

We just have one of the questions that have come through is: someone is reflecting on that they wonder what welcoming actually means? What will they see, hear, think and feel if that's occurring? And I think that's such an interesting reflection on this and acknowledging that that looks different for different people. There's also comments around being respectful, including not categorising families or cultures with stereotypes. You know, we’re seeing people as in families as individuals and where people are feeling safe, their culture is respected, acknowledged and celebrated. So they’re some of the things that are coming through which I think really resonate with the sorts of things you've been saying today, Amy.

Amy Shine

Especially as we see so much diversity in our communities today. Just with Easter, even, at the end of last term we have, well there’s two in particular that come straight to mind that don't celebrate Easter but because we have a relationship with them we could, I’m so sorry someone is outside doing some work.

Debbie Yates

That’s okay.

Amy Shine

Because we have such respectful relationships and we know these families so well we can say to them so how, how do you want this to look for your child, and what can we do? What else can we do to celebrate later on in the year with you?  Just understanding where they're at and if we didn't have those really safe and genuine, authentic relationships I don’t know that we would be as comfortable to have those conversations or they wouldn’t be as genuine.

… who is from India. I've learned so much about his culture because we talked about Easter and I said how everyone camps in our community at Easter time. I said, a lot of camping, and he was genuinely interested, wanted to hear about how we celebrate and then I heard about some different celebrations that he had, that his family has. So we're going to do that later on in the year. I think that's just a lovely way to celebrate different people and different cultures. And for our children to learn at this early stage and it’s just so mainstream. It’s just lovely.

Debbie Yates

That trusting relationship is what helps to support the families to share those stories with you.  That's that, it's that kind of cyclical element that the more they trust, the more they share, the more there’s trust built. So it does sort of, you know that feedback loop is so important.

Amy Shine

Yes one hundred percent and I think he probably wouldn't feel so comfortable to come in and celebrate with something else later on in the year if he didn't know that we were genuinely interested, that we wanted to know, and his wife actually often has a laugh: Oh Amy does not want to hear everything all about us. But we do, we really do and I think they have delight. I love the word delight, that we want to know more about them and their family and then that spreads to their friends and so the are other friends in their community will know that it's comfortable and it’s a safe space to come so that's really great.

We talked a little bit about our cultural safety, and what it looks like at your place. For me and it's about decluttering, like I said and if you do have to have things on show, making sure it is in a respectful way. Even our mission values that you've seen already come up, we had them framed and they're up on a wall. So it's not a document we’ve done and then it’s just going to sit on a shelf and no one's ever going to revisit it. I want it to be alive and I want people to ask questions about it and we will review it regularly and keep coming back to that and make sure that we don’t lose sight of who we are and what our core business is. Because this is all about children, and having safe, safe environments where we can learn and because we know that if we don't have it, we don't feel safe in our environments,  we’re not going to learn, we’re not going to concentrate and there is so many, so much going on in people’s lives that we do need to just sometimes take a little step back and reflect on who we are, and what are we here for, and for me that’s about having fun, being safe. We can’t lose sight of that because we do, and yes we do need to do documentation and all of those other things we need to do. Because it’s a business, why we came into this amazing sector.

A friend of mine once said that we have the best jobs in the world. We are actually paid to play and I often refer back to that and say that in my team: You know you are paid to play and a few new staff that we had come from other services say, Oh I feel like I'm not working hard enough, I'm just sitting down playing with the kids. That’s what we want, that’s a good day. That’s a great day. My favourite time is when I walk into a classroom or outside and think, gosh where are all the teachers? There’s no educators around. Where is everyone? I can't see them because they're actually sitting down playing with the children and that's one of my favourite things and absolutely fills my cup.

So we’re just going to talk a little bit now about inclusion, and that, how that supports our sense of belonging and wellbeing and what inclusion means for our service. So when I first started here, like I said it was quite affluent. There were no Aboriginal children, no low-income families. No one from another culture. It was pretty much one cohort of families. We did a lot of work just on developing, like employing Aboriginal staff. We reduced our fees which was a little bit - my management committee back then: it was like, my god, what are you saying, so I said just trust me. Let's do this. Let's make it welcoming place for everyone because I think it's important everyone has that equal opportunity. So we actually, in 2019 won the Narragunnawali Awards. Highly recommend you look at these resources if you haven't and if you’re looking at inclusion especially, in the Aboriginal space, the Narragunnawali platform is awesome. We developed a RAP, a Reconciliation Action Plan and submitted that and were fortunate enough to win the awards.

For me that wasn’t so much about winning an award. I was so proud to win that award because it was for our community and we made the front page of the paper. We got to go and present at the local council meeting. It really lifted our identity in the community and it's shifted a few people’s ideas. So look, quite well known, as I said, in the community, so few of the older generation, in particular are like, tell me about these awards. Why do you do what you do and why do you teach Aboriginal language at your preschool. So it’s opened lots of conversations and to me I think that is just such great inclusion because it wasn't really talked about a lot. So, I was proud of that and that was and we were quite well known and some Aboriginal families would identify us as you know: go to the Aboriginal Preschool. We're not an Aboriginal Preschool. That is absolutely fine and I do, we do, identify that we’re a very welcoming place.

In the recent years we identified too that inclusion for us is also about disabilities and other things so we became NDIS providers. There is lots and lots of hard work but it is so valuable and to have that wrap around service and have it all under our roof is just so easy for our families. There's no long waitlist because there's nothing worse than saying to a family, we need to refer you, but then you’re going to sit on that waitlist forever. So that's been really valuable. There’s just so many things with inclusion and I just think treat everyone equally and with respect. We don’t ever think we’re ever better than anyone else or less than anyone else. As I said earlier, we’re, we walk this path together.

So, the belonging is to me, I think, belonging is a fundamental human need. To me it is absolutely vital that we belong. Like how good do you feel, when you go to a space and you feel like you belong or someone knows your name and talks to you and genuinely is interested in you. You know yourself that just gives you such a great feeling, and we want everyone to have that feeling, I think.

We have some really practical ways that we respect diversity and invite people in and have social connections and build a community of diversity. So we do lots of barbecues. We actually have an awesome barbecue area out the back. Next week we’re having breakfast. It is, it's sort for Mother's Day but it's just a breakfast week and that's so, that we do celebrate the diversity in that not everyone may have a mother or they might have two dads and one dad, you know. We want to really respect that so we thought lots. Every Mother's Day, every Fathers Day, that sort of comes around again that conversation of: do we do it? Do we not? So we're trying to think of ways that we can still celebrate but how we can celebrate with our whole community. So anyone is welcome to come to our breakfast.

Just sharing interests: So, I had a Dad last year who is also an Aboriginal artist and he was so, so shy and you could tell that every time he walked into preschool he was like oh, what am I doing here, and head down, which is absolutely fine and we really respected that. His child happened to have a lot of needs as well and we wanted to build a relationship with him so we invited him in. And I wanted some more artwork and I actually said to him: Hey I would really like some artwork. Can I get you to, can I buy some off you or can I go one step further and ask you to come in and actually paint it here at preschool with the children, or you can set up your station then you can be painting while the children could be around you. He brought in some stencils. Love or hate stencils it really didn’t, really, did not matter, for the purpose of this experience. So he came in and he had all the boys around him, a couple of girls. The boys absolutely adored him and he sat and he painted with children and we got a painting out of it too. We did pay for the painting. But now I see him downtown or out and about and he is like my long-lost best friend. And I really value his friendship and I just think it's so valuable that he feels like he's actually made a little bit of a difference in our lives, and he definitely made a difference in our children’s lives. So he had well, would like, when you want me to come back. I’ll come back and paint for those kids again. So wow that fills my cup, it was just so, you can’t beat that.

So that’s just a couple of examples and like I said with the other father who's going to come in and do it, have a celebration with our children. There’s so many different things you can do it it's just about thinking creatively and inviting people in  to your space safely. Yeah I think the sky’s the limit and it's great to make friends and it's great to have, when you are interested in other people, their stories are just amazing and the girls will say to me: Oh my god, you’ll ask anything but it’s because I’m genuinely interested. Now I see the other people, the other staff here doing the same thing and I think, oh, that is so refreshing that we, we want to know about each other's lives and share, and I think, yeah, that gives you a very big sense of belonging and anything…

Debbie Yates

I really love that language of delight in others. Like I think that’s like, you know, we often say you know, be interested but I think that actual element of being delighted to hear and to learn and learn with and from others is just such, such lovely language, I think there.

Amy Shine

And they're really happy. This is a genuinely happy place to be. When you walk in the door everyone says, oh gosh everyone’s so happy. But we are genuinely happy and I mean, hey, we have our rough times as well and I’m telling you there are stressful times. Now children are challenging but if we can look after each other it doesn’t have to be that hard and we can laugh sometimes it’s so hard, like well – we’ve got to laugh or we’ll cry and I’m sure everyone has had that happen. But yes, we will do, really need to look after ourselves and each other and with strong relationships, because this is a very important job that we have.

So our next slide here is about belonging to a community. Another initiative that we've started is a pop-up preschool. The way that it started was when I started, like I said we didn't access our whole community so I did a bit of door knocking. I knocked on doors and said, Hi, my name’s Amy Shine and if I knew they had a little child, why doesn’t your child come to preschool and hey, I’ve got some enrolment forms here. I was in a cul-de-sac in one of the streets and even within the cul-de-sac, by the time I got around to the end of it they’d all rung their neighbours and said: Hey, this girl’s comingey , this girls comingHey and they were all like “Are you, wait, we’ve been waiting for you to come and visit us”.

I found when I did that door knocking that the families were so much more relaxed and open to share with me because I was on their turf and I was the one out of my comfort zone. Whereas when, they, if they had come to preschool: what’s the local, what door do I go in? Who do I talk to and what form do I fill out and have I got everything I need?

So we decided to, and we’re a small community so it is a little bit easier. We do generally know each other but we decided to do a pop-up preschool where we go to different parks in the town, and there's a picture of it there. It's as simple as we take a blanket and some cushions. We take some morning tea and some activities and the families can, they can sit and have a chat. We’ll have a play with their child, we can educate them.

We’re finding that other community members want to come with us now as well. So the local dentist came with us once and gave away dental hygiene packs: so a toothbrush and toothpaste and other little bits and pieces. Community Health Nurses have been with us but, yeah, it's just about developing, and you don't have to come to preschool. It's just a place to be and to get to know who we are and for us to educate them about other things as well.

Another great thing that we've been doing is reading in the bookshop in downtown and that gets a whole different dynamic of people come to that. It's about sharing what we do and sharing why literacy is so important and once again anyone is welcome to go to that. And we attend lots and lots of community events and we’re heavily involved with our local Shire Council. So that’s great. Some great other things that we’re doing.

So the EYLF has had Version 2 come out and I just wanted to share with you some updates that, that have really resonated with me.  Just going to read that out actually.

So, the principal in regards to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives really has resonated with me, in particular, on page 17. ‘Educators grow their knowledge of kinship systems and cultural connections in their local communities so they can build engaging reciprocal relationships between early childhood settings and the community’. So I think, yes, it's about that two-way, really respectful relationship. I just think we need to have, even my son who's 16: Tell me about reciprocal relationships, Mum, what does that mean because respectful… I was like, oh yeah. I said, Mate, I could talk to you about this all day. You just need to show respect for people and, yes, you’ll get respect back, I said. There’s nothing nicer than people feeling like their respected and you genuinely care.

So, our next little slide is, oh, so here we created this amazing, amazing space and once again I know we can't all have these amazing spaces. We are very fortunate that we have a lot of land at Forbes and this was a new space. This community room here, you can see in the side, there’s separate access, there’s a door to the side so families can come in. On Monday there's a Mother's Group with the early childhood nurses. On Tuesday there’s a pop-up Clinic. Once again, you don't have to come to preschool, anyone can pop into the clinic and have a chat to the nurses, but under our roof. They can come through the preschool or go to the side door. Friday, this Friday, we're having a flu clinic in there so people can come and get a flu vaccination, and they're all things that we worked really hard with like we wanted to build connections with our Allied Health professionals. And you know, having a Mother’s Group in there on a Monday, that’s about building that transition to preschool so as soon as you have your baby you know about pre-school and your understanding. I’ll go in and have a little hello, go and talk about early education and why it’s so important, give them a book.

It's just a really lovely space to go in and you can have a meeting with a family or we can invite Community. We don't charge for that room, it's all about having that space that our community can feel comfortable in. We also have a Nurse Audiologist coming in and she does hearing checks here at preschool because we are on the opposite side of town to our hospital as well. So this is a really easy space to get to and once again it's comfortable. One of my mum's actually said to me, I'm not going up to that hospital. I’m coming here to get my flu vaccination. Like, that is absolutely fine, that’s why we’re doing it. So, that's great.

So distributed leadership, I’ve said this a few times in my little presentation, but, yes I just truly believe we cannot do this on our own. You do need a strong leader and it does probably come from the top down, but, you know, make this infectious. Make it just, you know, we want everyone to want to be like this. You don't think about empowering others because it does not, one person cannot do this alone and it takes a community to raise child as we here so, so often. And I think when we do have distributed leadership we build a culture of spaces where people do want to be and they want to learn.

So yeah, I think don't, don't do this on your own because you don’t need to and it's so much fun to do this with the team and it builds your community capacity.

Debbie Yates

I think that's one of the things that there’s such a strength in your setting and I do feel you couldn’t have achieved the things you had if you didn't have an approach where, that there was that distributed leadership and that different people were provided with opportunities to lead various projects and champion different elements.

Amy Shine

One hundred percent, no. I wanted and who wants to do everything on their own – not me. I’m more than happy to delegate and share the load.

I just think that I really want to grow. I want to walk out of this preschool, or I want to win the Lotto or go on an amazing holiday and they do not need me and they do not know that I'm not here. It's not about one person. You know, we now actually have eleven teachers here, and we only probably only need four but it's a culture of learning here and even one of my, I actually asked her permission. We have a fifty-five year old Aboriginal lady who works here and she's just finished her Diploma. She never thought she’d do anything and she said it's not because you made me do it. It's because I feel like I wanted to learn more and I'm in a space where I'm allowed to learn and people will help me learn and Yeah, we gave her a big bunch of flowers yesterday because she graduated yesterday. We’re so excited for her and I just think that if you can grow that in your community, that’s priceless. We want to educate children as much about adults.

Debbie Yates

Because they're both so connected. I mean, but you know like we say, it's a cyclical element, isn't it all the time. There's some really lovely comments coming through in the chat about just how inspirational your service is; how amazing it looks; how, they, some people quite, you know, envious of the space that you have that you're able to then provide these spaces which invite in different community organisations and how welcoming it is. There's also some interest in those, those connections that you’re already making to the updates to the Early Years Learning Framework. That specifically you were mentioning around the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elements but there's also a real strengthening in language about mental health and wellbeing around diversity and inclusion. Those elements are quite strengthened in the new version of the Early Years Learning Framework and My Time Our Place so it's really great to see that your service is already reflecting on those elements as well.

Amy Shine

One hundred percent, yes. No I do love having a beautiful preschool, don't get me wrong but I always sometimes wish I was still in the old little preschool just to show that you don't have to have a big beautiful grand space because you can do this in a small space that's been there for, my old preschool was there sixty something years. You can still do it; you just need to think a little bit more creatively.

So my last is a little Ted Lasso quote because I'm just mad on Ted Lasso because he's so positive for these people that are Ted Lasso fans, he’s so positive and he's infectiously passionate about creating a culture of safety and belonging and I truly believe you can do anything, and believe in yourselves.

Debbie Yates

It's such a strong theme of the conference over these two days, our virtual conference about connecting with what, what really resonates for us, like how we can actually build our resilience? How can we build our professional boundaries? But how that's actually really reflected and also how we can find joy and pleasure in the work we do, and those senses of connection and community and belonging for us as staff, as educators, as people in these spaces as much as it also is, obviously, for the children and families as well.

So I think that's such a lovely quote for us to finish there. We probably have just maybe one minute for any particular questions that might have come through from the chat at all. I can see lots of positive comments coming through with the chat, not so many questions, but lots of people saying thank you so much Amy for your passion. I can certainly see why you connect with Ted Lasso, Amy because that positive passionate is, is elemental for you, is really infectious and inspiring for others.

Amy Shine

And I think and always look after yourself first.

Debbie Yates

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.  It's really great to think about an action that we're going to take away and I think if people share in the chat box, share with others, can help us to really reflect and commit to taking an action away from something we might have learned from Amy’s sharing today. So feel free to add into the chat box something that you might consider implementing; or a conversation you might start tomorrow to support inclusion and belonging. To really think about distributed leadership in your space as well.

So really like to thank Amy for joining us today, joining us online as well which is always a bit tricky and challenging sometimes in these spaces. So thank you so much Amy for joining us today and for sharing about what's happening in Forbes Preschool, and really hoping and helping us to explore and consider different elements of inclusion and diversity and distributed leadership in our spaces.

And asking people to please consider your own wellbeing as well as we move out of the session and have a bit of a break. So you’ll  have about a ten or twenty  minute break between this session and the next one. Feel free to take, have a drink, have a break, move, walk around and then feel free to come back and join us for another session shortly.

So thanks so much, Amy, for joining us, and thank you, everyone for listening today, thanks.

Amy Shine

Thanks, Deb. Thanks everyone

End of transcript.