At Lansvale Preschool, we take an active leadership role in the community and wider education and care sector. We continually strive to share our knowledge and experiences by presenting at conferences, workshops and hosting tours of our service. We endeavour to identify best practice, modify it to suit our setting and then we celebrate our success with the wider education and care sector. Distributed leadership helps to build a culture of trust and shared responsibility allowing more reflective dialogue to take place resulting in enhanced practice.This dedication to inspire and support others to improve quality early childhood education is what makes leadership at Lansvale excellent.
As mentioned previously, Lansvale Preschool has implemented the school-wide Positive Behaviour for Learning system. Our modifications made to this existing K-12 framework to reflect language and expectations appropriate to our service and the outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework has led to recognition by the Department of Education. As a result, Lansvale Preschool has been invited to share their PBL journey by creating a “FilmPond” movie for the NSW Department of Education Wellbeing Channel. We were also asked to present at the Positive Behaviour for Learning Conference, Early Childhood TeachMeet P-2. We had an audience of educators from across Greater Sydney and showcased our evolved approach to PBL in the preschool. We broke new ground for PBL, our setting and the Department of Education.
Filmpond is a portal for NSW Department of Education teachers and schools to share examples of excellence and effective practice through the development of classroom documentaries. Our Filmpond documentary shares our journey in creating an effective PBL system in our preschool setting. By creating this short video, we aim to share our experience and expertise with colleagues across the state, as well as local educational communities to support others to learn from our strategies and teaching practices. Our Filmpond documentary was launched in July 2017 and was shared with educators from NSW DoE and shared on Twitter by the PBL Operational Directorate. As a result, many educators made positive comments around our introduction of PBL to Preschool. Some were interested in sharing PBL with their staff and implementing it within their Preschool setting. Excellence in leadership at Lansvale sees our educators not only supporting professional learning, by sharing knowledge for the benefit of the whole teaching profession, but also celebrating the work of teachers in NSW Public Schools more broadly.
Our presentation at the Positive Behaviour for Learning in the Preschool Context Workshop is another example of how Lansvale are leaders through their dedication to inspire and support others. Our Lansvale educators presented information on how the PBL framework can be implemented into a preschool context and how PBL practices align with the Early Years Learning Framework in guiding children’s behaviour. We made connections with other departmental preschools who are in the process of implementing PBL in their setting and provided support and guidance to assist them in this endeavour.
Excellence in leadership is also evident in how Lansvale hosted and presented at the Early Childhood TeachMeet in 2016 and 2017. Early Childhood TeachMeets are informal, collaborative experiences organised by educators, for educators from Preschool to Year 2 in order to share ideas and experiences. Our exceptional Lansvale preschool educators created and presented an iMovie which showcased their innovative and creative approach to creating a relevant and effective PBL program for their preschool setting. The TeachMeet also involved a tour of our preschool. It was during this tour that many teachers, principals and school leaders demonstrated interest in our practice. The connections we made during the TeachMeet resulted in more visits by teams to be inspired by Lansvale’s exceptional learning programs. The success we had at this Early childhood TeachMeet resulted in the department approaching Lansvale again to present at the next TeachMeet around our special project exploring creativity.
At Lansvale we strongly believe that our Positive Behaviour for Learning program effectively guides children’s behaviour and supports their wellbeing. Being recognised as leaders in this endeavour, we strive to celebrate the success of this framework with the whole early childhood education sector. We are very proud that our leadership in PBL has connected with and contributed to 17 out of 37 pre schools across Ultimo Operational Directorate implementing PBL in their setting.
Lansvale preschool has also actively contributed to the Beginning School Well initiative which is a funded project to support students from a refugee background in transition to school and into Term 1 Kindergarten. In 2016, and again in 2017, a group of 25 teachers (some of which are Assistant Principals, Deputy Principals and Instructional leaders) and parent mentors toured our preschool to observe quality learning through play. Most of the teachers and mentors came from schools without a preschool, yet have been asked to run a facilitated playgroup for pre-schoolers as part of their funded program. The success of this visit further cements Lansvale as leaders in inspiring change and innovative practice. The following comments regarding our preschool visit validates this.
“Highly informative visit to the Lansvale Preschool. It was amazing. With great ideas for learning and play experiences and use of space.”
“Flexibility of the learning space for children allowed them to engage with the activities that interested them at their own pace.”
“Learning spaces encourage collaboration, were open ended, encouraged creativity, and communication.”
“Beautiful, warm and welcoming space. Well thought out environment. Welcomes the whole community.”
““Loved the bilingual signs and notices. Very welcoming.”
“Great to see all KLA’s in the space yet in a play based setting. Still learning through play. Great to see everything we learnt about in the course in the setting.”
“Inspirational.”
We are excited to have been given such positive feedback and are thrilled to have made such a significant impact on their practice. Our P-2 education officer, commented after the visit, that there was a general improvement in the set-up of play group learning spaces (visiting schools’ settings) with them becoming inviting, beautiful, respectful and open-ended. Hearing great feedback further enhances our passion when sharing our ideas and inspiring others. Our practice is always evolving and we are more enthusiastic than ever to further share our skills, knowledge and expertise with others.
Lansvale influence extends beyond our local and wider early childhood sector. In 2017 we hosted a team of 10 Singaporean expert mathematics teachers at our preschool. During their visit they engaged with our preschool children in science and mathematical experiences in order to garner an understanding of Australian systems of education. They were in awe of the engagement of the children and the hands on quality learning that was evident through play. Some of the feedback from our Singaporean colleagues included the following statements-
“The children’s responsibility and capacity to take risks in their learning.”
“The genuine happiness and love of learning exhibited by our kids.”
“The overall confidence and rich language used by our kids to describe their learning is a highlight.”
Lansvale takes an active leadership role in inspiring and supporting our fellow public school preschool educators. We have supported Busby West Public School Preschool, Sefton Infants School, Canley Heights Public School Preschool and St Johns Park Public School Preschool by hosting visits at our centre and sharing our pedagogical practice and resources to support them throughout their Assessment and Rating process. Cabramatta Public School initiated a visit to our preschool to seek our support in creating a quality transition to school program. Nowra East and Fairy Meadows Public School are also scheduled to visit our preschool in Term 3 to obtain ideas and inspiration to support their teachers and instructional leader. We have hosted P-2 initiative officers in charge of more than 50 department preschools visit our preschool to obtain ideas and practices to share with their preschools
As champions of quality early childhood education, we will always inspire, guide and support our fellow colleagues in achieving best practice through the development of professional learning communities. We share with an ethos of collegiality and generosity of spirit.
