In early 2025, Kitsilano Neighbourhood House received a grant to partner with the Early Childhood Pedagogy Network (ECPN), welcoming a pedagogist into our childcare centres to work alongside our educator teams. Through this role, educators had the opportunity to work and learn alongside a pedagogist, reflecting on their own practice, deepening their thinking, and exploring how our values show up in their everyday work with children. Our educators have always been committed to the values we hold: connection, curiosity, and respect for children as capable people. What this partnership provided was dedicated time, space, and support to slow down, reflect, and think critically about the routines, traditions, and ideas that shape everyday practice in our centres. ECPN’s contribution created opportunities for new ideas to emerge and for our practice to continue to grow and evolve in service of children and families.
Having a dedicated pedagogist working alongside our childcare teams offered something different from a one-time or annual professional development session. While with us, the pedagogist was able to become a part of the daily life of our centres, observing practices, building relationships with children, educators, and leadership, facilitating conversations, and creating ongoing opportunities for reflection. Over time, ideas could be explored, revisited, and carried into everyday practice and routines.
One example of a shift that emerged from this collaboration was in how we approached parent-child drop-offs. In the infant room, mornings can move quickly: families arrive, parents sign in, children get settled. Through thoughtful conversations about creating a more welcoming atmosphere to start the day, our educators made suggestions about what could be added — prompting the creation of a more connected space. Now, as families arrive, they’re welcomed with quiet music, dimmer lighting, and an environment where parents and caregivers want to linger and chat with each other. Nothing about the schedule changed! But the feeling and intention behind that welcome-to-the-day did.
Similarly, our approach to daily circle time began to change too. Circle time had traditionally been more structured, with children listening and following the educator’s lead. Through our ongoing pedagogical reflection, educators began to see circle time as an opportunity for listening, dialogue, and shared thinking between children and educators — where children’s ideas and questions could help shape their learning experience. Circle time became less about following a set routine and more about creating space for children as capable participants and leaders in their own learning.
The partnership also created space for us to continue reflecting on our approach to childcare and how our practice can keep growing and evolving. Together, we explored several guiding questions: What does it mean to call ourselves Reggio Emilia-inspired? How does the BC Early Learning Framework show up in our daily practice? How can we continue to embed our neighbourhood house values into our childcare practice? Throughout this partnership, we had opportunities to explore these questions further and more intentionally bring our neighbourhood house approach into our everyday work.
Questioning familiar habits and routines isn’t always comfortable — and it’s not supposed to be! Meaningful change and continuous growth often mean being willing to question what we know and consider what else might be possible. Our collaboration with ECPN and our pedagogist gave us the opportunity to make space for reflection, notice what mattered together, and bring different perspectives to our practice as we explored new ideas and continued to evolve in ways that reflect our values and our approach to early childhood education.
Growing and evolving our practice has always been part of our work. Having a pedagogist alongside our teams has allowed us to go further. With community support, we hope to continue having a pedagogist work alongside our childcare teams.
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