Activity 1.1 | Arriving as we are

Disposition of curiosity

In this first module, we reflect on the capacities required to have difficult conversations. While visionary practice is inspiring and a place to direct our attention, it also needs courage.

The ECEBC Code of Ethics (2021): 

“frames positive expectations and provides aspirational goals. It is a living framework that improves with use and experience in practice” (p.3). 

To support you in your practice and the difficult work of learning through experience, this course equips you with tools and strategies to identify behavioural patterns arising from conflict, and to navigate our internal landscapes with intention and discernment.

In addition, this course will support child care managers and leaders to articulate why ethical practice is required, not optional. Too often, justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion are afterthoughts. In truly ethical practice, these values are at the centre of the framework.  

We live in a time of growing social disparity and polarization. Conversations around justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion can activate defensiveness, and threaten to further divide our communities. This course is intended to support you to find a holdfast that can anchor you through the tension, and to stay committed to the ethical responsibilities of our profession, “supporting children to live in a spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality, and solidarity and are committed to creating early care and learning environments that promote and support these values” (Early Childhood Educators of British Columbia, 2021, p. 5). In order to support children to experience these rights, we have to cultivate them within ourselves, and within our relationships with colleagues.

How might we envision child care managers and leaders as people who are committed to compassion and curiosity? How might we be willing to be seen as learners, acknowledge lifelong learning as a requirement, and then create professional communities structured on the dispositions that make learning possible?

adrienne maree brown is a guest on the podcast, “We Can Do Hard Things.” In this episode, adrienne speaks about her book, Loving Corrections (2024) and how a disposition of curiosity is a requirement for leading toward more-just-worlds. She speaks to basic human needs, and how we can maintain integrity in our relationships, even in the face of dissonance.

Take some time to listen to the "We Can Do Hard Things" Podcast(Weiss-Berman, 2024) before navigating to the reflection activity. 

Reference