The Intentional ECE

What changes when educators come into relationship with materials themselves? Roberta Pucci shares how our own experience of a material helps us read a child’s process, know when words help and when silence is enough, and offer materials we’re excited to share. A conversation about environments that are never neutral and the entering, immersion, and closing of the creative process. To learn more a...

What happens when we look beyond what children are learning, and notice how they’re learning? Starting with a fairy town that turned into a curiosity about water, this episode explores how that kind of noticing helps educators understand who children are, not just as learners but as people. Revisiting Journeys by Miriam Beloglovsky & Jessica Frazier The Intentional Educator

Mentorship is not a hierarchy - it’s a relationship. Kerry Drake joins the conversation to explore what genuine mentorship looks like in early childhood education, from the reciprocity and vulnerability that both mentor and mentee bring, to what it means to step into a formal mentoring role with intention, capacity, and the right support in place. A rich and honest conversation that includes peer-...

What if professional learning looked less like a workshop everyone sits through, and more like the way we hope children learn: hands-on, relational, and full of questions? In this panel conversation, Rosalba Bortolotti, Paola Lopez, and Heather Jackson explore who the educator really is, with their own history, their own ideas about teaching, and their own need to belong before they can take risks...

Childhood isn't a waiting room for adulthood. It's a valid place on the life cycle, with its own perspectives, ideas, and theories. Through a story of moss, a spray bottle, and a fairy town built on the carpet, we explore curiosity as a disposition rather than a strategy, and what becomes visible when developmental milestones move out of the foreground: the nonlinear, joyful, whole child i...

What would it mean to create a learning environment that children don't have to recover from? Kisa Marx - educator, author, and Liberation Architect - invites us to look through a kaleidoscope rather than a binary lens, shifting our perspective until we can truly see the child in front of us. A powerful conversation about cultural humility, child-affirming spaces, universal truths, and what it...

The most important readiness isn't academic - it's social, emotional, and human. Norline Wild joins the conversation to explore what it means to prepare future educators to truly see children, know their students, and bring intentionality and joy to their practice. From picture books and play to developmentalism and systemic change, this is a conversation about what teacher education can b...

This year, something's shifting in how educators think about the start of school - some are waiting to build the space together with the children who arrive. In this episode, we explore what that small choice reveals about a much bigger question: what do we actually believe about children, learning, and our own role as educators? A quiet invitation to revisit your values - not to change them,...

Community in an early learning centre isn't something that happens by accident - it's built intentionally, through partnership, dialogue, and a willingness to ask hard questions about what we value and how we structure our time. Jessie Frazier joins the conversation to explore what it really means to create community with children, families, and educators - from integrating families into p...

What if the divide between infant and toddler, preschool, and school-age educators isn't really about age groups at all - but about status, hierarchy and whose work gets recognized as teaching? In this panel conversation, Paige Wernick, Ron Grady, and Dr. Misty Paterson explore the depth of knowledge educators carry, how it’s often not seen, the structural barriers that keep us from building b...

What looks like defiance is often a nervous system trying to stay safe. Adam McCormick, Professor of Social Work at St. Edward's University, explores trauma as an internal wound, the nervous system's constant search for safety, and why children can act out in the very relationships where they feel safest. We talk about what boys are taught to disconnect from, the practice of going shoulder...

What does meaningful learning actually look like - and why doesn't it move in a straight line? In this episode, I trace a week of colour exploration in Art Lab through Guy Claxton & Emily Poel's Bodies of Learning and Suzanne Axelsson's Original Learning Approach - and consider what it asks of myself and of educators, to stay present and trust the process. Resources: The Original L...

When children's developmental needs go unmet, the effects ripple far beyond the learning environment. Megan Graham - play advocate and Child and Youth Care student - explores the brain science behind trauma-informed practice, the role of play in building a sense of self, and why educators' observational skills may be their greatest tool. A rich and honest conversation about reimagining sys...

Children have a right to autonomy - and so do educators. And like children, we don't practice that autonomy in isolation; we work in teams, organizations, inside larger systems. In this episode, Collective Autonomy: What It Looks Like When We Work Together , drawing on Suzanne Axelsson's concept of collective autonomy, Brené Brown's BRAVING framework, and insights from Margaret Wheatle...

A quiet, small moment at snack time - a child looking sideways instead of inward to answer a simple question - became the doorway into something much larger: what happens when children learn to scan for permission and approval instead of trusting their own noticing. This episode explores autonomy, agency, and the difference between compliance and true self-regulation, and asks what it might take t...

What if the educator's most important role is not to direct learning, but to wonder alongside children? Miriam Beloglovsky explores the power of revisiting journeys - how children enter inquiry, what sustains their thinking, and what happens when educators trust children's capacity to learn and let go of the need to control. A conversation about vulnerability, responsiveness, and what it t...

When we approach our practice with curiosity and inquiry, children have a way of taking us somewhere we didn't expect to go. Jessica Boritz, artist, educator, and researcher, shares how her teacher-researcher lens has shaped her thinking about beauty, imagination, and community -  and what a student-led art project called Creativity City revealed about what children are truly capable of when w...

A childhood streetcar ride, decades later, brings back more than a sound - it brings back a feeling. This episode explores how memory lives in the body, how that shapes the children in our care long before they have words for what they're carrying, and how our own perception, as educators, is just as shaped by our own histories. Drawing on Immordino-Yang's Emotions, Learning, and the Brain...

Even when we know where we're heading, the systems we work within, and our own history, have a way of calling us back. In this episode, I share a moment from my own practice where I caught myself mid-pull, and what it taught me about noticing, place, and the colleagues who help us see what we can't see alone.

When we see children as capable, rights-bearing individuals, everything changes - how we design our spaces, how we tend to relationships, and how we understand our own role. Rosalba Bortolotti returns to the podcast to explore children's rights as something living and actionable, and to remind us that relationships are the foundation of it all - including the rights of the educators who hold t...

What does it look like when we move away from the image of the teacher as knowledge holder - towards something more human, relational, more present? In this episode, I explore the question of when to teach - weaving together ideas from Suzanne Axelsson, Gai Lindsay's Art, Play and Inquiry , and Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach alongside two stories from my own practice. This is an epis...

What becomes possible when children are invited to explore mathematics through curiosity, inquiry, and meaningful problem-solving? In this conversation with William Polan, we explore how inquiry-based mathematics can support confidence, conceptual understanding, and more equitable learning experiences - helping children develop a stronger sense of ownership over their mathematical thinking. To lea...

Have you ever rested and still felt depleted? In this episode, Cathy explores what it actually means to restore yourself, weaving together Deb Dana's concept of glimmers, Dr. Pooja Lakshmin's work on values-aligned self-care, and a question worth sitting with: are your choices reflecting what you actually value? A gentle, reflective episode for educators who give a great deal - and deserve...

What becomes possible when children are invited to think like designers? In this conversation with Maïa Tarassoff, we explore how architecture and design experiences nurture creativity, confidence, and problem-solving—while empowering children to see themselves as capable contributors to their environments and communities. Learn more about Maia’s work: Petit Architect IG:  @petitarchitect

In this episode, Crystal Lucha invites us to think about beauty as an essential part of children’s learning experiences. Together, we explore how the atelier, loose parts, and process-focused art experiences create opportunities for children to express ideas, make meaning, and engage deeply with the world around them - while considering small, intentional ways educators can begin bringing more bea...