Educational Leadership Statement

My understanding of leadership in early childhood education begins with relationships. As Interim Supervisor of Child Development Services at the Jean Tweed Centre, I supervised a team of RECEs through a period of organizational transition, holding both the operational and relational dimensions of that role simultaneously. I understood that how I showed up as a leader, whether I modeled the same consistency, attunement, and psychological safety I expected educators to offer children — would directly shape the culture of the program. Alongside this, I have supervised ECE students on practicum placement over multiple years, providing both formal evaluation and the kind of ongoing mentorship that cannot be captured on a feedback form: the conversation after a hard moment on the floor, the question that helps a student locate their instinct and trust it, the consistent presence that communicates that growth is expected and struggle is part of it. I believe that supervision is one of the highest-stakes forms of teaching, because the educator you help shape will go on to be a consistent, attuned presence for hundreds of children and families over the course of a career. I do not take that multiplier lightly.

My contribution to the field has not been limited to what happens inside a classroom, it has extended to building the resources that make learning possible in the first place. At the Jean Tweed Centre, I developed and manualized two original curricula: the first is a parenting program, a six-module curriculum covering attachment, emotional and social development, discipline, and child safety delivered to mothers navigating recovery and complex family circumstances; and the second is an art therapy curriculum for high-risk youth aged 12 to 16, designed as an upstream prevention model for young people who might in the future require mental health and substance use support. The art therapy curriculum was developed in collaboration with a registered art therapist following formal training - a process that required me to translate specialized clinical knowledge into accessible, manualized group programming. Beyond Jean Tweed, I delivered educational courses at The June Callwood Centre for Young Women, bringing parenting and child development content to teen mothers in a community setting. Each of these experiences required not just knowledge of the subject matter, but the ability to design learning for populations whose access to traditional educational formats could not be assumed, and to do so in a way that was rigorous, trauma-informed, and genuinely useful to the people in the room.

Leadership in education sometimes means naming what is not working, not as a complaint, but as evidence. My recent research, Trauma-Informed Care: Perspectives of Early Childhood Educators, was motivated by a question I encountered repeatedly in my practice: what shapes early childhood educators' preparedness to implement trauma-informed care, and what systemic factors stand in the way? Through semi-structured interviews with five RECEs in Southern Ontario, I found that the answer was systemic, and rooted in gaps in post-secondary preparation, insufficient workplace support, and a lack of professional learning opportunities oriented toward trauma-informed practice. Critically, participants identified inadequate practicum experience in community-based settings as a significant factor in their sense of unpreparedness. I presented these findings at the 3rd Annual FAHCS Research Symposium in Brampton in April 2026, bringing them into a professional forum where they could inform conversation about how ECE programs are structured. I do not see this research as a completed project. I see it as the beginning of an ongoing contribution to how the field thinks about educator preparation, and I intend to continue building on it through teaching, publication, and professional engagement.

I have never understood leadership as something exercised alone or from the front of a room. The work I am most proud of has been built in collaboration with colleagues, with community partners, and with the people the programs were designed to serve. Co-authoring the Trauma-Informed Practice Workbook with the Jean Tweed Centre alongside seven other contributors was an exercise in exactly this kind of leadership: bringing together practitioners with different knowledge bases, synthesizing expertise across roles and disciplines, and producing something that has since been adopted across Ontario college ECE programs. The art therapy curriculum was similarly co-developed, requiring me to collaborate with a registered art therapist's expertise, and build something neither of us could have built alone. Delivering programming at Jessie's Centre extended that collaborative orientation outward, requiring me to understand a new organizational context and adapt my practice to fit it. What these experiences share is a model of leadership grounded not in authority but in contribution, showing up with something genuine to offer, remaining open to what others bring, and building toward outcomes that are larger than what any one person could produce. That is the kind of leader I aim to be in an academic department, and the kind of leadership I hope to model for the students I teach.