Glen Education Bentleigh East
Building Relationships for Learning
Glen Bentleigh East Kindergarten Educators
Quality Area 1: Educational program and practice
At Glen Education Bentleigh East, we believe that children learn best when they are engaged in activities that capture their attention and spark their curiosity. At our service, we are committed to providing each child with an individual learning journey book that is always accessible to parents and children. We take great care in documenting the children's learning journeys in these books, using effective documentation strategies that capture their interests, progress, and achievements. We have received positive feedback from parents about the use of these books, and we believe that they are an important tool for building strong partnerships with parents.
We also value the input of our families. We believe that parents and guardians play a crucial role in their children's education, and we strive to work in partnership with families to create the best possible learning experience for our students.
Our child-led curriculum is based around the ideas and voices of our children. We meet with them at the end of each week to reflect on the week and plan for the following week. We have created a program board that displays our overarching service learning goals, photos, and program. We also have a reflection book that is on display for parents, which includes photos and documentation of our ‘Unit of Inquiry’ at that moment.
We are committed to making our program visible and accessible to our families and community. We believe that by involving parents and families in our program, we can create a strong foundation for our children's future learning and development.
- Innesa Dorevitch, Early Childhood Teacher
Quality Area 2: Children’s health and safety
At Glen Education Bentleigh East Kindergarten children and educators work together to establish habits for health and hygiene. At the beginning of the year educators support children and families to engage in a hand washing routine after entering the building, as well as before every meal. Team members had daily conversations with the children regarding health and hygiene to minimise the risk of falling sick and spreading germs. these practices support children to embrace heathy habits for life and are embedded practices in our service.
All Glen Education staff have a commitment to maintaining a safe environment for children, we continue to grow our knowledge and practice through professional development training, infection control refreshers and knowledge on hygiene and safety practices.
Team members share the responsibility of documenting injury, illness or incidents and ensure families get are notified appropriately and receive a copy of any documentation for their own records. Our team also take steps to share information with children and families when a contagious illness is identified in the service, whether through face-to-face conversations, notes displayed at the sign in area and email notifications.
- Supreet Kaur, Early Childhood Educator
Quality Area 4: Staffing Arrangements
Our team work collaboratively to enhance children's learning and development. the educational team at Glen Bentleigh East kindergarten is comprised of qualified and experienced educators, who develop warm, respectful relationships with children, create safe and predictable environments and encourage children’s active engagement in the learning program.
All the teachers and educators get an opportunity to contribute to the educational program, seeking moments to extend different experiences for children. Educators continuously and consistently assist each other to maintain the highest professional standards. This year staffing arrangements have been adjusted to allow educators to work in one centre throughout the week, rather than being split across different services. This provides safe and warm environment to the children, where their continuity of care is valued. When an educator is unwell, our team always try to arrange reliever who is familiar to the group to help.
During team meetings and in our communications,, we take opportunities to learn from each other and are guided by the wealth of skills and experiences that each member of our team bring with them. We believe that communication is very important and that’s why we use a variety of strategies to ensure open communication between all staff to maintain the professional standards, interactions, and relationship.
As a team we share responsibility for kindergarten administration responsibilities, this was strengthened when in Term 1 we reflected on the prompt: “how can we all help each other to complete the tasks that the kinder needs to run efficiently”. For the housekeeping, to rotate responsibilities and to gain experience.
We all aware of our service goals and we can acknowledge that we are really all trying to work as a whole service. As a team we believe that empowering children to make choices about their own learning and to participate in sustained explorative play. We always reflect and celebrate our achievement and the strive to improve if we needed.
- Rina Shah, Early Childhood Educator
Quality Area 5: Relationships with Children.
Educators and children's relationships are one of the most important elements of providing a program which is welcoming and nurturing. Educators build relationships to promote children’s feelings being acknowledged and respected. This helps educators to support children to regulate their emotions, especially throughout arrivals and transitions throughout the day. Educators employ strategies such as maintaining eye- contact, displaying empathy when guiding them, supporting them to engage in areas of interest, initiate friendships or tackle new challenges.
Educators often observe situations where children benefit from support to model strategies to solve social problems. Educators use strategies such as role play using puppets, reading storybooks, sand timers, visual aid clocks, visual flashcards, waiting bench/chairs for turn taking to help promote fair and respectful play amongst children.
- Vernessa Johnstone, Early Childhood Educator
Quality Area 6: Collaborative partnerships with families and communities
At Glen Bentleigh East Kindergarten we invite families to join with us and recognise their place as their child's first teachers. We seek feedback from parents to gain a better perspective and understand how we can best support their child to thrive in the kindergarten space. We work in partnership with parents to build relationships and share in regular conversations, discussing any things they would like us to know about their child, for example if something has changed or happening at home, a new skill they have been developing or other events that may affect their development.
This process supports us to set appropriately challenging goals for children, in consultation with families. Once of the ways in which we make the connection between kindergarten and home evident in our environments is displaying family photos in our service. This creates a very warm secure environment; children enjoy looking at the photos together and talking about their families to each other. This gives a sense of connection to families for all children.
We invite parents to participate and volunteer to come into the service and showcase their talents or hobbies, giving the children open minded ideas for cultural diversity, for e.g., baking, dancing or to talk about their occupation. these experiences highlight how the partnership between educators and families is valued and forms an important part of our program.
By Christine Balabas, Early Childhood Educator
Quality Area 7: Leadership and governance
During this year as a team, we have focused on the Glen Education Philosophy and its importance in defining our purpose as educators and guiding our pedagogy of learning and development for children and families within our kindergarten community.
As a team we have engaged in regularly critically reflecting on our performance. We consistently refer to the philosophy to guide our teaching and to support children’s learning and development. To assist our embedment of the principles, we have even gone as far to have the philosophy in our staff room on the wall in large text, for quick reflection and to evoke thought and inspire us on a daily basis.
Every time I go back and read the philosophy, I see more and more in its wisdom, and I can relate it to every experience and learning moment. To me, this document has become more than just a philosophy, it has become an inspiring piece of knowledge that can be related to all learning, development and quality of the care and education of young children and families. Its meaning remains relevant, and I can imagine will remain so for the future. We will continue to enjoy its inspiration as a philosophy and as the basis of our purpose.
- Kate Alao, Early Childhood Teacher