Leading Inspired Learning

Ep: 37 - Introduction to the CECE, Pt. 1 with Melanie Dixon

Welcome to Leading Inspired Learning: A Strive Podcast! In this episode, Olivia hosts Melanie Dixon, RECE, Director of Professional Practice at the College of Early Childhood Educators (CECE). Melanie provides an overview of the CECE and breaks down common misconceptions about their role and their work. Listen, learn, reflect, enjoy!

Duration:: 25m
Broadcast on:: 03 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to Leading Inspired Learning, a Strive Podcast. [MUSIC] Welcome, everyone. My name is Olivia Misko, and I am one of Strive's Professional Learning Specialists. Today, I will be your host for this podcast episode. Today, we are excited to welcome Melanie Dixon, R-E-C-E, and Director of Professional Practice with the College of Early Childhood Educators, also known as C-E-C-E. Today, in this episode, we're going to get to know the College of ECE a bit more, and also maybe do a bit of myth-busting. So, welcome, Melanie. Well, thank you very much, Olivia, and to Strive for the invitation. Awesome. So, today, I just have some questions and wonderings. You've been wanting to kind of clarify some things with our community for a little bit now, and we thought what better way to contact the College of ECE themselves, and have them answer some questions. So, we just wanted to start by wondering what is the College of Early Childhood Educators, and what purpose does it serve? All right, well, one of the things that I do like to share when I have opportunities to connect live with R-E-C-E's, or registered early childhood educators, is that they are the College of Early Childhood Educators. The body of the profession, which is over 60,000 registered early childhood educators, we are the College. Now, how does that actually get represented and decisions made around us as a self-regulated profession? That's through the College Council, which is made up of 24 council members, 14 of which are elected members to council, elected registered early childhood educators, who are elected by registered early childhood educators, and then because we are here to regulate the profession in the public interest, there are 10 public appointees appointed by the government, so by the province of Ontario. So, when people say, "What is the College of Early Childhood?" Really, that's the body of the profession. That's awesome, yeah, and I think it's important to note, just recently, at least in our area, there's actually an election that was going on, and I think that just speaks to how important it is to make sure that you check your emails and see when those voteings are taking place, because, as you said, we are the College of ECE, and so we have to make sure that we are putting our voice there by voting on the people that we want. So, yeah, that was something new to me because I'm new to the College of ECE as a member. I just finished my first year, so I had my first year voting, which was very exciting. Very cool, congratulations on being a new member of the College. -Thank you. -Yes, very exciting indeed. All right, so what does it mean to be registered with the College of Early Childhood Educators, and what is our responsibility as a registered ECE? -Okay, so it means that you've met certain criteria to certain requirements to become a member, so like other regulated professions, so there are over 40 regulated professions in the province, we said it about the fifth largest regulated profession in the province, and you could say across Canada, and that we are one of the larger provinces. So, what it means is the College has established some requirements to become a member, some of which includes educational requirements, so it means that individual has the knowledge, the skills, the values, to be able to safely, ethically, and professionally practice within the scope of practice, which is defined in the legislation. It means that we have, once we become a member, our name appears on the public register, so that employers, families, ministry staff at times can confirm that we are indeed a member of the College. It means we have ethical and professional responsibilities that are outlined in our code of ethics and standards of practice, and to ensure that we're continuing to enhance those skills and that knowledge and improve and enhance our practice. Well, we have requirements for ongoing learning through our continuous professional learning program, and we're accountable to our practice, our behavior, our conduct as professionals. Yeah, I think that really highlights the importance and why we are registered, it's a protected title. So, what that means, not everybody can call themselves a registered ECE. Right. So, if you're going to call yourself an early-childed educator and registered early-childed educator, our protected titles in Ontario, and we have a designation, that's RECE and ECE. Again, the R indicates that you're registered, and people might understand that from the perspective of other regulated professions, like a registered nurse or registered massage therapist, or yeah, so there are other regulated professions that also have protected titles, and like them, unless you are a member of our code, you can't use those titles. Yeah, and also, I wanted to highlight that you had mentioned some of the responsibilities that we have is that continuous professional learning or our CPL, and just for our listeners, I just want them to know that that is why we actually have a CPL support network as one of our professional learning opportunities, because we want to be able to support our community in making sure that they're upholding their responsibilities, and so if you have questions, maybe you're new, maybe you need a refresher, I know the CPL kind of in the past couple of years has become a new system, so for folks that are listening that are wondering if they have any questions about the CPL, you can come to our CPL support network sessions, and you can ask some questions, get some support, some guidance, and continue to engage in our professional learning opportunities so that you can uphold that responsibility. That's a wonderful resource to have for sure. Yeah, it's actually gone really well, I think it's an awesome resource for folks, and our role at Strive is to support our community, so we thought that that would be a great way of doing that. You kind of mentioned like the public register, what is that specifically, and could you explain that a little bit more? Okay, so one of the requirements under the Early Childhood Educators Act, that's the legislation that created the college, so one of the responsibilities of the college under that legislation is to ensure there's a public register, as I mentioned earlier, it's one way for employers, families, and other interested parties can confirm that an individual is indeed a member of the college, and then what is their registration status? So it basically holds our name. We are all under one class of registration, which is general, and it also will hold any information specifically related to our status. Are we a current member, are we remembering good standing, or have we been suspended for non-payment of fees, or failure to comply with this CPL program, or by order of a committee? So those are in cases where a member's undergone a disciplinary hearing, so that's the type of information that is there. You can also find if a member has any terms, conditions, or limitations that have been placed on their certificate of registration, and that information is also available there, and then any outcomes, again, not a lot of our members have to face a complaints and disciplinary process, but when it comes to a discipline process, that that information will also be in the special notices area. Okay, I was wondering if maybe we could talk a little bit about, I know not everyone gets a complaint or goes into a disciplinary process, but I know that's something that our community wonders, and is it an immediate response? What is the process if someone gets a complaint, and what is the process of the disciplinary process if they're different? So any member of the public, so that could be an employer, it could be a colleague, it could be a parent, and even other entities can let us know if they have a concern about the conduct of a member, their practice, and if they have a concern of any sort related to a member, they can contact the college, and there is a form, basically it's available online information and is available online for the public on our website, and there would be a form if somebody is wanting to submit something formal. If somebody's curious and wants to, you know, chat about a concern, they can also call the college before going through that process to understand, kind of hear a little bit more about the process and what might be appropriate, so we confirm receipt of it. It is, depending on who submitted it, so sometimes there are cases where an employer is required to submit a mandatory employer report, for example, if they've suspended a member for a conduct matter themselves, from work, let's say, that would be an example, but the confirmation is the REC receives the confirmation that something has come through, they have an opportunity to respond to that complaint, depending on what's going on. If it seems like it is something that needs to be investigated further, there'll be an investigation, so an investigator is appointed, the professional regulation department, and then all of the any statements from the member, the original person that made the complaint information from the interviews that they may have conducted and documentation gathered, that is all presented to the complaints committee, and they look at that documentation to try and determine what actions they're going to propose take place. They could take no further action, they could do something like a called a verbal caution, and then, so those are just a few, I'm not going to go into, there are a couple other kind of instant things that they can do, but basically if they do feel that it's more than a verbal caution and something needs to be looked at deeper, they'll refer it to the discipline committee, so they have to feel that there has been professional misconduct, and in terms of what is professional misconduct, that is spelled out in the professional misconduct regulation, so it's basically around 29 different acts or in actions in some cases, yeah, so they have to feel like, okay, that there's the strong potential for professional misconduct, they'll refer it to the discipline committee, and then at that point, once it's been referred there, that's when it becomes a public matter, so that's when the information is going to appear on the member's public area of the public register to say they've been referred to a hearing, and that's available publicly, and the outcome of that hearing is also available publicly. Okay, so if someone has a complaint, that's not going to be public knowledge yet, until it is determined that they're going to go to the disciplinary team. Correct, yeah, good to know. Now that we're chatting about that, we were kind of talking about as a team some areas that maybe we could try to myth bust, because I think sometimes people are confused, there's so many different organizational bodies within the earlier system that not everyone knows what everyone's roles are, so recently over the past couple of years, advocacy has really come to the forefront for early childhood educators, and a lot of folks kind of wonder, is that the role of the college of ECE, are they an advocacy body, or is there a different organizational body that would better represent advocacy for educators? Yeah, so the primary role or mandate of the college is to regulate the profession of early childhood education, and we do that in the public interest. So we're ensuring that our ECEs, again, are safe, ethical, that they are exercising their professional and ethical responsibilities, and we're doing that again in the public interest, what's the public interest? We could consider children, families, our colleagues communities as the public, so really we're about the individual in relation to their professional responsibilities and accountability under the Early Childhood Educators Act, the regulations that fall out of that act, the code and standards, that sort of thing. So a regulated profession, it's really important that they also have a strong professional association, and so in Ontario, we have the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, there's also a Francophone Association, the Assessia Sien Franca Fanelits, Casia and de Cervis Alain Bastolontario, or the Acacio, so those two bodies can more explicitly advocate for RECEs in other ways around workplace, like work-type conditions, the salaries, that sort of thing, but it doesn't mean that we don't have areas of commonality around upholding standards and understanding the realities as well of the workforce. So the college takes an interest in that as well, but how we'll do that might look a bit different than the association or other bodies that are support the associations or that collaborate with the associations. Yeah, I think that really helps clarify the different roles of these professional bodies in the earlier sector. Another word that we hear often is union. Is the College of ECE a union? No, we're not a union, and they play a different role even from the associations, right? So they're really more indirectly in the workplaces. Yeah, so they have a particular role in relation to kind of the employment agreement and within that employment space. So it's another area where we don't get into in terms of our role. We pay attention to certain pieces of other legislation that may have some workplace implications, but again it's going to be very specific. So things like the Education Act, the fact that there are RECEs that need to be feel certain positions there, same with the Child Care and Early Years Act. There's certain things that we pay attention to like prohibitive practices and what positions or but we're still not in that space and regulating that. It's things we need to be aware of and be communicating also to members. Okay, and then finally, as someone who is a recent graduate, I've heard conversations in regards to students' roles in placement and roles in relation to the College of ECE when it comes to incidents. Could you maybe clarify because there's been this narrative going around and I'm honestly not sure if it's true or not, but if an incident occurs in a classroom where a student educator is involved, would that student educator be fined for the incident or like what would that process be? So I think there's a couple scenarios that can play out. One is where the student has potentially witnessed something that has occurred and they have been involved but not necessarily they're not a contributing factor to something, let's say inappropriate or something occurred that went wrong, went awry. The student again has a particular responsibility to let the appropriate people know about that, right? Because ultimately, anybody working within the space around children want to make sure that children are going to be safe and that they're protected and so it's really important that the student understand that they do have a responsibility to report to the appropriate authorities if something, you know, a child got lost. There was an inappropriate behavior guidance, that sort of thing, as examples. So that could be an opportunity to contact the college if it was an RECE or you don't have to call a children's aid society, if it was suspected abuse. So there's that responsibility and then there's their own accountability when something happens that they, you know, they themselves did. It was something with their conduct. So there'll be some workplace or practicum setting, you know, guidance or rules to follow in that context around how that's going to be dealt with. They're not yet a member of the college so it's not like we can do anything at that point. However, if somebody had a concern about that, it doesn't prevent them from contacting the college and letting us know because they are potentially a future member of the college and if it was something very concerning, there's nothing preventing somebody from let from contacting us and letting us know. Yeah, I guess that was that kind of leads to my following question is, could that incident possibly, so say it was the student educators' acts of misconduct, could that prevent them from getting registered with the college potentially? It could potentially. It would be depending on what occurred we have on the application form, the section around issues potentially affecting practice, and they would have a requirement to let us know if they were involved in a scenario that involved Children's Aid Society or the like. So it doesn't mean that it's an automatic, you're not, you can't become a member of the college, it's going to depend on kind of what occurred, but we may see typically we would look for more information or ask for more information. And that could be a scenario where a term condition or limitation is placed on a member's certificate to practice, let's say. Maybe we recommend that they undergo or take a course or participate in mentoring relationship, for example. Awesome. And then I guess one other question that folks may have is, say you don't register one day, maybe you've changed jobs and you're like, I don't need to be a registered ECE anymore, and then maybe down the line in the future, they have come back to the profession. Are they able to like re-register? What would that process look like? Okay, well, first of all, our advice would be, if you know, you're no longer going to be working in the sector and in a position that requires registration, do resign that if you can maintain your registration, you're going to have to meet all the requirements still. So that's one way is not to resign, but another way is to let us know when you resign or cancel your certificate of registration versus letting it suspend and get suspended for nonpayment fees, because all that shows up on the public register, right? And so a future employer might be kind of curious, hey, you know, what's going on. So start with that, considered, you know, just going through the proper channels to cancel your certificate, if that's what your choice is. You have up to three years after you resign or cancel your certificate of registration to reinstate, and there'll be a reinstatement fee, and basically an a farm to complete. And again, depending on any potential issues affecting practice, things should be fairly straightforward, but that's one thing to keep in mind. However, after it passes over three years, then the certificate is revoked. And what that's going to mean is you have to reapply to the college. And if we change any registration requirements, for example, educational requirements or any other requirements for registration, then you'll have to meet those new requirements. Okay, that's some good clarification. Thanks for sharing. I think this episode has really, I mean, helped me and hopefully will help our listeners to better understand the roles and responsibilities as educators, as well as the role that the College of ECE plays. For me, I've had some really good personal connections because my mom is a physiotherapist, and so there's also a regulatory body for her. There's teachers, doctors, nurses, but for some folks that don't have that personal relationship to these professional bodies, it can be a little confusing. And so I think this hopefully will help clarify some of the wonderings that our community has. Before we end, I did also just want to let the listeners know that if you have any questions about the new CPL requirements and information. Last year, we actually did a professional learning opportunity with the College of ECE to better understand that. And we actually have that professional learning opportunity recorded and on our Strive Online. So if you are curious about that and still have some wonderings, you can go and check that out. I'm also sure if you have any questions you could reach out to the College of ECE themselves, they wouldn't be the best people to reach out to more than Strive. We can help you, but we might also guide you to go to them. So feel free to reach out to them. Again, Melanie, I want to thank you for your time and for clarifying some wonderings that our community has had over these past couple of years. It's been a pleasure to get to know you and to get to know the College of ECE a bit more. And I just want to thank you for your time and sharing all your knowledge and expertise. Well, thank you again for the opportunity. And we again welcome any questions as well through email or calling the College. I'd be more than happy to respond to any queries or curiosities that you have following this podcast. And I would also like to encourage members to keep their eye out. You mentioned earlier the importance of email and paying attention to what comes through from the College. We share resources through things like connections, which lead you to our College Talk blog. So that's another space where you can learn more about the activities of the College and Council. And we talked about complaints earlier. There was a great article focused on complaints specifically to address some of the questions that members may have about it. So I highly encourage you to check out our website and our College Talk blog as well. Awesome. Thank you for your time. Until next time, listeners, bye for now. Thanks so much for listening. You can connect with us on Instagram at leading inspired learning pod or on our website at strive SWO.ca/podcast. I would love to have you tell a friend or a colleague about this podcast. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.