Leading Inspired Learning

Ep: 40 - Community of Practice: Infant Educators with Paula Dibbits

Welcome to Leading Inspired Learning: A Strive Podcast! In this episode, Bre hosts Paula Dibbits, RECE, the facilitator of the Community of Practice: Infant Educators at Strive. Paula talks about the value of this community of practice and what to expect if you attend. Listen, learn, reflect, enjoy!

Duration:: 15m
Broadcast on:: 14 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(gentle music) - Hello and welcome to Leading Inspired Learning, a Strived Podcast. - Hello and welcome to Leading Inspired Learning, a Strived Podcast. My name is Brie. I'm the data specialist with the Strived team. And I'm so excited to welcome today a good friend of mine and a wonderful colleague, Paula Dibitz, who has been the champion of our community practice infant educators for the past four years. Paula, can you believe that? - No, I can't. - In four years. - Yeah. - I know. - It does. We're so excited to have you here. We're gonna just talk a little bit about the community of practice and why we love doing it so much. But first, I'd love Paula just say hi. - Hi. Thank you so much for following me. - We're so excited to have you here. So I know a little bit about your past, but obviously our listeners don't. So if you could just let them know what you do and how you first got involved with community practice infant educators. - Okay, so about myself. So I've been an ECE for over 22 years. I graduated in 2002 from Fanshawe. And I've had the absolute privilege of supporting parents and their children and educators in many different capacities for the past 18 of those years. Those being one-on-one support, parenting and professional workshops. And my current role or position is that I'm working at Rebirth Wellness as an infant massage educator, instructor, sorry, not educator. And as a qualifying postpartum doula, which is amazing. I still can't believe that I get to do everything that I love. Yeah. And then I guess my personal story is I'm, I have two children, Luke and Megan who are 11 and 13. And I've been married to my husband, Wayne, who's a science and chemistry teacher for 18 years. So yeah, crazy. - It is, it is. And I know being a doula has been or training to be a doula. I shouldn't say being yet. Training has been really transformative for you in so many ways. So I'm so happy to hear that that's still going really well. And yeah, thank you. - With that. - So community practice infant educators, tell me, why do you think it is something of value for folks to attend? - Great question. I think it's having this, their own space where they can share and relate to the stresses and the joys and the challenges that they experience. I mean, every classroom, every room in a childcare center or home childcare or in a licensed childcare will have challenges and stresses and joys. But everyone can only relate to that age group that they work with. So infant educators is, or the community of practice is really great for them just to come together. And it shows how much respect that we have for their work and how valuable it is. But it's also, we don't just talk about ideas in the classroom, which still is a really important point or part of it, but we talk about burnout as an infant educator. We talk about stress in the workplace. We talk about communication with both parents and the coworkers involving students, placement students. During the winter time, we talked about seasonal effective disorder and what it looks like in both infants and adults. But then the nice thing is the value of it is, it's not me or you deciding the topics. We really encourage them to think about what they want to talk about and share those ideas before another community of practice. And then we will talk about it because you and I are not in the front lines. We don't know what it's like. So it's allowing them to share what they want to talk about it in, hopefully, a very safe space, a very safe and open communication kind of away. - Yeah, I think it was really nice. And I think uplifting for a lot of participants recently that we've spent so much time on that well-being and belonging component with all the change and all the turnover that continues to happen in our sector, feeling validated in the work that they do, I think is such an important piece. So as a co-facilitator, that's always the piece that stands out for me when I walk away. It's like, wow, we spent so much time on that connection. And it's uplifting as a facilitator so I can only imagine how it feels as a participant to have that experience honored in that space. - Yeah, and that's, I never, I mean, for goodness sakes, it's infants, it's babies. It's fun, it's, you know, so it shouldn't be this very strict and, you know, scary things that come to it. It's supposed to be fun. And I love, oh my goodness, the idea is that people share or things that I don't really think about, especially, I mean, the chats going and you're talking with people. And I mean, let's be honest, Zoom is a wonderful thing because it opens up so much more opportunity for people. Maybe they don't have transportation to get to, you know, some continuing education or PD. This is another great way. Like sit in your living room, you know, and just have your tea or your coffee and let's just share. And yeah, there's so many different thought-provoking ideas or questions that people ask. And again, not being in the front lines. I'm like, I never would have thought about that. And I'm always writing down. I have my, on my side of my little space down here. I have all these different ideas that hopefully we can talk about in upcoming ones that people have shared that are really important to them. So. - Yeah, and we, I think are very fortunate in that we have a quite a diverse group. Like they all work with infants in some capacity, but out of the regular attendees, we have some folks that have been in the sector for 20, 30 years. We have some folks that are brand new. We've even had students join in a few times. Like that we're either on placement or getting ready to do their placement in an infant program. And it just leads to these really like rich conversations with lots of different perspective, which is really great. - And what I love about that is because, yes, we do have the seasoned educators and the new ones, but there's never, never this divide. They're just alongside and, and are so welcoming and so encouraging. And even like the, the ones that have been in the, in the business for, can I say business? - The business of care. - Yeah. - That have been around, like they're still learning because things are changing and, and you're always learning. You're never, you're never done. And so everyone learns from, from everyone. And I think my, one of my takeaways from each one is just the power of a relationship with these little ones. You know, we do, we do share like, "Oh, is there any activities that you've done?" Like, what's, what's the new thing in your, in your classroom that was, you know, a hit or a miss? But putting, putting the, the activity aside, it's all about building that relationship first. You know, the infancy is, is the typical first time in childcare and it can be very scary. I mean, being away from, from their parent or caregiver. So these educators are so passionate and they love this so much that they focus on that relationship. They focus on getting that child to warm up to them, getting them comfortable without forcing them, without saying, you know, "Oh, Tommy, you're fine. You don't need anything. It's, I'm coming alongside you. You're struggling. Let me all just, you know, sit beside you and then we'll go from there." And I remember one, one story in particular that I, I think, yeah, it keeps coming up each, each, or most, most times, yeah. Most times is a little, I think it was a boy or girl. I can't remember. But this educator, it was a water day. And this educator was trying to encourage this little, this little one to come into this little tiny kitty pool. And here she wasn't having it. And so the educator just literally, you know, pulled up the cups of her pants and stuck her feet in and was splashing around and kind of showing this little one that it's okay, it's safe. And they're curious, but they're like, "What's happening?" But this, this educator, this infant had this relationship with this educator over time that eventually, yeah, this was, she trusted her, she got into the water. And that, I think it's just a beautiful illustration of how, you know, you could have all the best stuff, but if that child is not comfortable, is not feeling it, is having those big feelings, none of it matters, so yeah, they are amazing. - They are, we, like, I know we get a lot of new folks coming to the community practice pretty regularly, but each time I'm always just blown away by how kind and responsive and caring each educator is that comes in to participate. Yeah. - Absolutely. - It's such a wonderful community to be a part of. - Yeah, and I just love that there is that space to honor, honor them. Parents, all over the world are interesting. These educators, to look after their, I know this is used a lot, the precious cargo, it's absolutely true, but infancy, like that's, you know, a little one, that's a big relationship right there. And so having this space, having this time just dedicated to them, I think really shows, like I said before, the amount of respect that we have for them. - Yeah, absolutely. So we've talked a lot about the value of being in this community practice, but what can someone who maybe hasn't been to a community practice expect if they were coming to community practice in vint educators for the first time? - A lot of laughing, I think. - Agreed. - Yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun, safe space. And you can just sit back and listen. You do not have to participate. Like I say, two people, I'm not gonna call you out. I'm not gonna say, "Hey, you, what do you think about this?" 'Cause I hate that, I hated that in school, I think. So if you wanna participate by speaking or sharing, you know, you can unmute your mic, it's very casual, but if you don't feel like speaking, just say things in the chat, and we are very diligent on reading that channel, but I hope eventually you will feel comfortable enough to share your experiences, your challenges, and all those things, your joys, because it really is an encouraging environment, and it's fun. It flies by, like an hour and a half just flies by, and sometimes we literally have to... Like it's like a cliffhanger 'til the next time, because it's like, "Oh, yeah, we ran out of time." Okay, join us so when we talk about more about this, but no, I really hope the more the merrier, I guess. I always love when, I mean, even a small, intimate group on Zoom is awesome. When we get so many, there's just so many more ideas, and you never know who you're gonna learn from, what you're going to take away from that. So yeah. - I think too, it's really guided by them. That's the key thing. It's like, it's very different than the traditional, like kind of sit down and learn, and listen to a lecture, and take something away, or take notes, or whatever. This is very guided by the topics, or the questions that you are interested in. - Absolutely. - And it adds such a richness to the experience, because it's something that you're already invested in. You're like, "Yeah, like I really, really want to know, "or want to dig deeper into this." And that, and like you said, that tailoring specifically to the age group that you're working with, because we know age age group has its challenges, and triumphs, but infants are, they're a very unique group with unique needs. So having a space where you can really dig into the nitty-gritty of those things is so nice. - I love that. And I laugh because, you know, past experiences, again, not being in the front lines, I'll suggest an idea, or, you know, what if, and this is not infant community practice related, but just, you know, in years past, like, "Oh, let's try this, let's do this." And the pros, the, in front lines are like, that would never work, because A, this child does not like this, or B, have you tried to, you know, corral, all these, all these activities, it's not going to work. I'm like, "I never thought about it." In theory, yes, it's a great idea, but, hey, yeah, and practice could be a totally different thing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like, "Oh, thank you." - Yeah, great. Thanks for raining in my wild ideas. - Hey, hey, what? We can't have a hot air balloon, what are you talking about? - What do you mean? Well, anything else, any actual little tidbits, nuggets of wisdom about the wonderfulness that is the community of practice infant educators. - No, but I'm excited for September. It's always, when the last one runs, it's like, "Oh, that's it." Now we gotta wait. No, I'm just looking forward to another season, I guess. And, you know, just seeing familiar faces, but hoping to see brand new ones and them seeing how, you know, how much fun it is. - Yeah, and educational, too. - It is, it is, but they coincide. Fun and education, same thing in my head. Well, thank you, Paula. This has been wonderful. And to those of you listening, please feel free to reach out to strive at any time to chat with us more about the community practice infant educators. We will be, as Paula said, resuming back in September. So we are very, very excited to reconnect or connect with you for the first time. It is an open group. So please sign up if you are interested in attending. We would absolutely love to see you. - Thanks, Bri. - Thanks so much for listening. You can connect with us on Instagram at strive SWO 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. (gentle music)