Now more than ever, there is a need for early childhood professionals to comprehensively integrate trauma-sensitive practices into their work with children and families. This essential resource offers instructional strategies teachers can use daily to support their students dealing with trauma in early learning environments. Readers will learn to create opportunities for children to use their natural language—play—to reduce their stress, to cope with adversity, to build resilience, and even to heal from trauma. Nicholson and Kurtz provide vignettes, case study examples, textboxes, photographs, and descriptions of adapted therapeutic strategies ready for implementation in the classroom. Practical and comprehensive, this book is ideal for both prospective and veteran early childhood educators seeking to understand trauma-informed practices when working with young children (birth–8) in a range of environments.

This second edition of Trauma-Informed Practices for Early Childhood Educators continues to guide childcare providers and early educators working with infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, and early elementary-aged children to understand trauma as well as its impact on young children's brains, behavior, learning, and development. The book covers a range of trauma-responsive teaching and family engagement strategies that readers can use to create strength-based environments that support children's health, healing, and resiliency. Updates include a greater emphasis on resilience and collaborating with mental health specialists, a new chapter on developing children's sensory literacy and additional case studies to use in workshops or professional development. Supervisors and coaches will learn a range of powerful trauma-responsive practices that they can use to support workforce development and enhance their quality improvement initiatives.

Now more than ever, there is a need for early childhood professionals to comprehensively integrate trauma-sensitive practices into their work with children and families. This essential resource offers instructional strategies teachers can use daily to support their students dealing with trauma in early learning environments. Readers will learn to create opportunities for children to use their natural language—play—to reduce their stress, to cope with adversity, to build resilience, and even to heal from trauma. Nicholson and Kurtz provide vignettes, case study examples, textboxes, photographs, and descriptions of adapted therapeutic strategies ready for implementation in the classroom. Practical and comprehensive, this book is ideal for both prospective and veteran early childhood educators seeking to understand trauma-informed practices when working with young children (birth–8) in a range of environments.

This second edition of Trauma-Informed Practices for Early Childhood Educators continues to guide childcare providers and early educators working with infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, and early elementary-aged children to understand trauma as well as its impact on young children's brains, behavior, learning, and development. The book covers a range of trauma-responsive teaching and family engagement strategies that readers can use to create strength-based environments that support children's health, healing, and resiliency. Updates include a greater emphasis on resilience and collaborating with mental health specialists, a new chapter on developing children's sensory literacy and additional case studies to use in workshops or professional development. Supervisors and coaches will learn a range of powerful trauma-responsive practices that they can use to support workforce development and enhance their quality improvement initiatives.

This book is for early childhood educators committed to learning about gender [in]justice as a foundation for creating gender affirming early learning environments for all children including those who are transgender and gender expansive (TGE). The authors engage in progressive and contemporary thinking about gender acknowledging its complexity, intersectionality, diversity and dynamism. They draw on Miranda Fricker’s (2007) concepts of testimonial injustice to discuss how young TGE children are considered “too young” to have gender identities or to truly know themselves and hermeneutical injustice to represent the challenges TGE children face in educational environments that do not provide them with linguistic or interpretive tools to help them fully understand and communicate about their gender. Woven throughout the book are the lived experiences and counter-stories of TGE children and adults that privilege their voices and highlight their right to contribute equally to societal understandings of gender and to access all the tools a given society has available at the time to help them name and understand their own experiences.The authors provide discourse, conceptual frameworks and concrete strategies educators can use to inspire resistant social imaginations (Medina, 2013) and actions that improve gender justice for our youngest children.

Designed for all professionals working with parents and families of young children, this practical guide offers comprehensive resources for building trauma-responsive family engagement in your school or program. Throughout this book, you'll find: Evidence-based practices that promote trauma-response family engagement. Exercises and tools for identifying the strengths and learning edges within your program, school, or agency. Vignettes from people and programs striving to create trusting, asset-focused partnerships with families that improve equity and promote culturally responsive practices. Reflective inquiry questions and sample conversations to help you examine your own practices. With concrete examples and easy-to-implement strategies, this critical book helps readers put theory into practice while providing essential support for individuals and groups both new to and experienced with trauma-responsive practices in early childhood.

Designed for all professionals working with parents and families of young children, this practical guide offers comprehensive resources for building trauma-responsive family engagement in your school or program. Throughout this book, you'll find: Evidence-based practices that promote trauma-response family engagement. Exercises and tools for identifying the strengths and learning edges within your program, school, or agency. Vignettes from people and programs striving to create trusting, asset-focused partnerships with families that improve equity and promote culturally responsive practices. Reflective inquiry questions and sample conversations to help you examine your own practices. With concrete examples and easy-to-implement strategies, this critical book helps readers put theory into practice while providing essential support for individuals and groups both new to and experienced with trauma-responsive practices in early childhood.

There is inherent complexity in a field like early childhood where people and their relationships are at the center of their work; daily practices involve negotiating webs of dynamic relations, shifting contexts, value conflicts, and profoundly diverse family constellations and community and cultural environments. Emphasizing Social Justice and Equity in Leadership for Early Childhood: Taking a Postmodern Turn to Make Complexity Visible expands our conceptions of leadership by drawing on postmodern ontological and epistemological perspectives that value, and make visible, diversities and complex human experiences. Julie Nicholson explores the challenges facing children domestically and globally regarding contemporary social justice and equity; she also provides several frameworks and specific strategies that early childhood educators can draw from in enacting leadership inspired by the ideas presented throughout the book. Richly contextualized vignettes are woven into each chapter to highlight the voices and experiences of courageous early childhood professionals working in very different roles and contexts.

On 7 July 2005, Julie Nicholson's life was changed forever. Her daughter, Jenny, was killed on her way to work in the London bombings, shaking Julie's beliefs. With heartbreaking honesty and integrity, Julie tells her story of love, tragedy and heartache for the first time. Jenny Nicolson was travelling to work when a bomb exploded at Edgware Road Tube station. Her mother, Reverend Julie Nicholson, struggled to comprehend the tragedy, her sorrow and longing for her daughter turning to rage and anger. Finding herself unable to articulate the three parts of the Eucharist: peace, reconciliation and forgiveness, because she 'felt so far from those herself', Julie made the difficult decision to resign her role as priest-in-charge of St Aidan with St George Church, Bristol, unable to reconcile her feelings with her position. She continued working with the church, in a youth arts project.

The first self-care book designed specifically for the early childhood field, Culturally Responsive Self-Care Practices for Early Childhood Educators is filled with helpful strategies and tools that you can implement immediately. Recognizing that self-care is not one size fits all, the authors present culturally responsive strategies drawn from diverse early childhood staff working in a range of roles across communities and contexts. By tying the importance of educator self-care to goals of social justice and equity, this book advocates for increased awareness of the importance of self-care on both an individual and institutional level. Through key research findings, effective strategies and personal anecdotes, this accessible guide helps readers understand and engage with the critical role self-care and wellness-oriented practices play in creating strong foundations for high quality early learning programs.

Specifically designed for administrators and leaders working in early childhood education, this practical guide offers comprehensive resources for creating trauma-responsive organizations and systems. Throughout this book, you'll find: Exercises and tools for identifying the strengths and areas in need of change within your program, school or agency. Reflection questions and sample conversations. Rich vignettes from programs already striving to create healthier, trauma-responsive environments. The guidance in this book is explained with simple, easy-to-implement strategies you can apply immediately to your own practice and is accompanied by brainstorming questions to help educational leaders both new to and experienced with trauma-informed practices succeed.

Specifically designed for administrators and leaders working in early childhood education, this practical guide offers comprehensive resources for creating trauma-responsive organizations and systems. Throughout this book, you'll find: Exercises and tools for identifying the strengths and areas in need of change within your program, school or agency. Reflection questions and sample conversations. Rich vignettes from programs already striving to create healthier, trauma-responsive environments. The guidance in this book is explained with simple, easy-to-implement strategies you can apply immediately to your own practice and is accompanied by brainstorming questions to help educational leaders both new to and experienced with trauma-informed practices succeed.

The first self-care book designed specifically for the early childhood field, Culturally Responsive Self-Care Practices for Early Childhood Educators is filled with helpful strategies and tools that you can implement immediately. Recognizing that self-care is not one size fits all, the authors present culturally responsive strategies drawn from diverse early childhood staff working in a range of roles across communities and contexts. By tying the importance of educator self-care to goals of social justice and equity, this book advocates for increased awareness of the importance of self-care on both an individual and institutional level. Through key research findings, effective strategies and personal anecdotes, this accessible guide helps readers understand and engage with the critical role self-care and wellness-oriented practices play in creating strong foundations for high quality early learning programs.

This book is for early childhood educators committed to learning about gender [in]justice as a foundation for creating gender affirming early learning environments for all children including those who are transgender and gender expansive (TGE). The authors engage in progressive and contemporary thinking about gender acknowledging its complexity, intersectionality, diversity and dynamism. They draw on Miranda Fricker's (2007) concepts of testimonial injustice to discuss how young TGE children are considered "too young" to have gender identities or to truly know themselves and hermeneutical injustice to represent the challenges TGE children face in educational environments that do not provide them with linguistic or interpretive tools to help them fully understand and communicate about their gender. Woven throughout the book are the lived experiences and counter-stories of TGE children and adults that privilege their voices and highlight their right to contribute equally to societal understandings of gender and to access all the tools a given society has available at the time to help them name and understand their own experiences. The authors provide discourse, conceptual frameworks and concrete strategies educators can use to inspire resistant social imaginations (Medina, 2013) and actions that improve gender justice for our youngest children.

By offering practical steps for adults who work with young children to build inclusive and intentional spaces where all children receive positive messages about their unique gender selves, this book increases awareness about gender diversity in learning environments such as child care centres, family child care homes and preschools. The book is based on some of the most progressive, modern understandings of gender and intersectionality, as well as research on child development, gender health, trauma informed practices and the science of adult learning. By including the voices and lived experiences of gender-expansive children, transgender adults, early childhood educators and parents and family members of trans and gender-expansive children, it contextualizes what it means to rethink early learning programs with a commitment to gender justice and gender equality for all children.