 So really, then, what does make it work? Well, it's that we have a range of children being included, and we're not just including the easy kids or the kids that have a little bit of a speech impairment, but we're also including the children with more significant challenges. And that all staff feel equally responsible, and competent, and capable. That's not just one person's job. And that whatever funding is there, and whatever external resources are there, you make the best use of it. And there's never going to be enough for everything we want to do, but we have to celebrate what we've got and leverage it and work from that and keep on advocating. Parents, of course, are our key partners. They are the experts about their children. So tapping into parent wisdom is a really important part of what makes it all work. And finally, and I just can't keep reinforcing this enough, we have to be agents of change. We have to work towards changing attitudes. We have to help make the systems more responsive to children. So once upon a time, an ECE told me a story about a little boy that she was providing support to. And she was particularly told not to bring her child to circle time because he was too disruptive. And when I heard that story, it really broke my heart. To me, circle time is like a fundamental citizenship right of preschool. Like circles where it all happens, right? It's where the peer group is formed. It's where the learning and sharing goes on. It's really an important part of the day and how dare we say that some children can't come. And yeah, it's true that some kids have a harder time and that's where your flexibility comes in. So I saw in a center a little girl with autism who absolutely refused to come to circle. And at that center, circle is a choice and I think there's lots of value in that approach. What they noticed was that during circle time she chose to go to the water table. She would have her hands in the water and she'd be watching what was going on over there at the circle group. And the staff noticed that she was quietly mouthing the words to some of the songs and answering some of the questions that were being posed over there. So at a staff meeting, they said, what are we gonna do about this? If we bring her to circle, she's gonna kick and fight and not wanna be there at all. Yet clearly, she's interested. So over the next few weeks, they did like a systematic desensitization thing. They slowly moved to the water table closer and closer and closer till finally it was right over next to the circle area. And the little girl kept her hands in the water which many children, as you know, find water play to be quite calming and therapeutic. And so she stood with her hands in the water instead of sitting on the carpet. What's the rule? Who says that's not okay? It worked for her and that group and Bravo to that team who figured that out and made it happen. You heard a suggestion a minute ago about using visual cues to help children be included. I wanna show you a picture of that. And I'll come back to this story again this afternoon. But here's a little guy by the name of Franco and he's very much a part of circle. He's non-verbal. I'm not sure if you can clearly see what he's got in his hand. It's pictures of all the songs they like to sing at circle time. And what they've done is they've cut them out and laminated them and put them on a binder ring and he's flipping through looking for the song that he wants them to sing. He doesn't actually sing out loud. He sort of hums a little bit now and then. He's very much a part of that circle. Can we see it one more time? What's he sitting on? A little stool. The other kids are on the floor. Franco's on a stool because he finds the carpet really itchy and he hates that carpet but if they give him a little stool to sit on, what's the rule? Is that okay? Of course it is. One more thing I wanna talk about individualizing in this picture. When Franco came to Daker because he's quite drooly, his mom was putting bibs on him and he had a bib and he would have like a few spares in his knapsack in his cubby. Okay, you all know this. When you're four and you wear a bib, what must you be? A baby, right? And so very quickly the staff said, okay, functionally the bib works but from a developmentally appropriate point of view, bad messaging here, right? So they thought about it. What could we do about that? They went to the dollar store, they bought a box of bandanas and Franco began wearing bandanas and when you wear a bib, you're a baby but especially here in Alberta, when you wear a bandana, you're pretty cool, right? So that's just how you individualize and how you can use visuals even for children who don't communicate verbally, he could still be a part of that circle time experience. Okay, so what is the role of the ECE? You know, I mentioned earlier that sometimes we put this on the shoulders of the least well-trained person of all and expect them to work miracles. Where really it is the role of the early childhood teacher. And so this data comes from the Ontario Ministry of Training, colleges and universities and it's what early childhood education graduates of a two year diploma need to be able to do with respect to inclusion of children with special needs. You can find this on their government website if you're interested. And they talk about a couple of things. They talk about how you need to be able to plan and implement, which we've talked about already. You know, you need to observe, you need to develop a plan, you need to evaluate it, you need to tweak it as you need to. And this gets us to the idea of using developmentally appropriate practices that what's appropriate for Franco is not a bib, but a bandana or moving the water table closer to circle or whatever else it might need to be. Here's another piece that they talk about. Oh, sorry, let me show you this picture. It's a photo of a circle time experience. What do you notice going on there? Not much of a circle, is it? So if you're into shapes, you might say, what kind of a circle is that? At this particular center, they have a number of children with behavioral challenges and different kinds of sensory challenges. And so their goal is to get kids together in a group. Some kids sit on the carpet, some kids prefer to be on the sofas. There's a little boy, let me see, this little guy there. And he's sitting on one of those little blue cushy kind of things. Yeah, he's a little guy with some sensory integration challenges. He does have a staff person sitting close behind him with his hand on his back because the little boy sometimes topples off of it. But this is good for kids. My mom would have said ants in the pants kind of kids, like they just wiggle all the time. So this allows him to wiggle and to bounce and he stays at circle. So they've really individualized based on the needs of the children in their group. Something else about the ECE, according to the Ontario Ministry, they talk about that ECEs need to be able to use a variety of observation techniques. And when you use those observation techniques, it helps you to see what else do I need to do differently. It helps you to design and modify the environment to make sure that it works for all the children. So here's a picture of Erin. This is the same little boy that I showed you earlier going on the field trip to the fire station. And I actually, we're gonna try something right now that I'm not 100% sure is gonna work. I'm gonna step down and I have a book about Erin here that they produced at his center. He's now about 11. And we're gonna try and see whether this is gonna show up on the screen for you. I was told to stand behind Zoe, so here I am. So this is a book about Erin. Let's see if that's gonna show up there. Can you zoom in? There, are we closer? Can you see that? Not too bad. Okay, so at the center, what they do is once a year, they take all the photos that they've taken of individual children, because they do a lot of documentation. They're kind of doing a regio type of approach. And they put together a book for each child that shows what they did that year at their program. So this is a very inclusive preschool and school-age center. And Erin's been going there since he was a little guy. Okay, so here's a picture of him with his friends. I'm not sure if that's really clear, is it? Yeah, so you can see him with his friends. Oh, I have to remember, I wanna do the circle thing and show it to you all this way, but I'm gonna keep it focused here, right? And just some of the words that they say, these are the children's words because Erin's not verbal. At our daycare, there is the boy named Erin. Erin is not exactly like everyone else, that's for sure. He cannot talk very well and he can't walk very well. He can't always tell us what he's feeling. But Erin is one of our friends. Now these are the words of the other school-age children. They've been with him since he was young. They go to school with him, they come back to the daycare after school and on in-service days. And you can see there, he's playing pool with the kids, right? He's got bunny ears, just like any other kid. Erin likes to read books. And you can see here one of his friends is reading with him. Erin likes football. I think you guys do too, right? Erin loves to play in the water. Erin goes to school with us. The children push him in his push chair. It's about a half a block from the center to the elementary school that he goes. Erin gives great hugs. Erin loves music. Music is often a real way to reach children with additional support needs. Erin loves to hang out with his friends. Hey, don't we all? Erin has a great smile. Erin has a special mom who loves him a lot. We love Erin too. We're happy when he comes to our daycare. That's the last picture. You know, I saw this at a meeting that I was at and I fell in love with this story because to me, this is from the children, this is inclusion, you see this happening, right? And I asked the staff at the center and they asked Erin's mom and she agreed that I could have a copy of the book to show at events like this. And at first I thought I would just pass it around, but I thought, oh, there'll be too many people that won't get to see it that way, especially our friends that are outside of Edmonton. So thanks for letting me show you that. It's pretty nice, hey, nice story. And I'll have it up here if anybody wants to come up during the lunch break to take another peek at it. Okay, so back to my slide, please. Here's a picture of how music can be so soothing. Again, little Franco up close, listening to the song being played by one of the ECEs and a couple more kids close by. No, we won't maybe stop to talk about these reflective questions right now, but I would love to challenge you to use these over the lunch and certainly in your cars, on your way back home, wherever you're going and they are great questions to bring to a staff meeting. What do we provide for children here? What does it feel like to be a child at this program? What does quality mean to us and how does inclusion fit into that picture? You know, are all children participants or are some kids just watching passively? How do the interactions feel? No, is it loud? Is it peaceful, right? Are there celebrations going on? And do we see the strengths of children first? Like in the story of Erin and like the story that we read about the little girl earlier, I'm forgetting her name, Moira, was that? Meryl, yeah. Do we see the children's strengths first? That's our big challenge because when you're committed to working with children, none of us signed a contract to say we would only have to work with the easy kids. What makes us special as early childhood professionals is our willingness and commitment to all children. And we actively work to embed what is it that we're doing with kids into the day-to-day, into our routines and activities. They don't have to go to a special program at Children's Hospital when they benefit from being in the day-to-day program with all of you. And our job is not just to passively stand by but to be a bridge builder. And we'll talk about that a little bit more this afternoon. How do you help nurture those social relationships? Here's some examples. Inclusion in the garden. At a center where they're very committed to growing what they eat as much as possible over the summer months. And you can see at the very back, I hope a little guy who's, where's my, there he is. He's being brought out. He's bare feet so he can feel the mud. He's in a supportive chair. But he's out in the garden. Did it, you know, take some effort to get him there? You bet it did. Somebody had to set that up and place him there, but then the ECEs could fade away because the friends take over. That's our role. You know, visuals as someone mentioned, you know, just having pictures up in the bathroom helps some children to be successful. Not all kids, but some kids will benefit from that being there. Another circle time, another big group. Sign language is being used with some children in that group so everybody's learning sign language.