Teaching Journey : Connecting through Early Education

Anne Gordan has been in the education sector for more than 30 years. She started as a high school science teacher and is now a lecturer and consultant in the early childhood space.

Anne has shared with us her love and passion for STEM and how she has integrated it into her practices even as a mum and grandma to a relational, contextualised play based inquiry. Her fascination on children’s theory really shapes her pedagogy and the q...

Rachel Smith is a Family Day Care educator based in a small town of 25 houses in Konorgong, NSW. She has been awarded Educator of the Year in 2020 and 2023 by Family Day Care Australia and recently been nominated for Women Changing the World Award.

She is a perfect example of rising from adversity. Being through with personal and professional challenges she has an inspiring ability to self-reflect and motivate herself and others. S...

Leanne Kapetanovski has worked in the sector for 33 years. She has worn many hats and taken on many leadership role from being a centre Director and a Preschool Field Officer. 

We spoke in depth about change and how Leanne shares how she navigates when changes happens and was honest that she didn't like change and reflected on the discomfort. She shared some thought processes that she considers when is reflecting of the change and ...

Carrie Rose has been in the sector for 35 years and is a founder of The Rose Way consultancy. Carrie spoke about her challenges in her early days as a teacher and with working with people with different dispositions and pedagogical practices. She shared her reflection of her own traits and how it influences her relationship with people, her leadership style and the drive to the continual motivation after 35 years in the sector. And...

Sarah Louise is an exceptional leader and advocator for the Early Years Sector and have many years of experiences within the sector with multiple roles and leadership hats. She is now a consultant and founder of Learning to Lead in Early Childhood. Sarah Louise talks about Kind Leadership vs Nice Leadership and discussed what burnout can look like. She spoke passionately about her Social Justice advocacy work and shared with us beh...

Anson Li has been working within the Education sector for more than 10 years. He has a unique teaching background teaching in Secondary Education before transitioning into the early childhood sector.

In this episode, we spoke about his journey and how he is constantly evolving as a teacher and as an individual. Throughout the recording, Anson demonstrated how deeply comfortable he is in being honest, open and reflective on his own ...

Darren Halim who have worked in the EC sector for 5 years. He has share with us his personal experiences as a male educator, shedding light on the profound influence that small gestures, nuances in tone, and word choices shapes our approach to inclusivity and equity within the sector. We reflected on how well we do as teachers in fostering an inclusive environment for children and engage in numerous conversations around gender incl...

Shelli Giosis has been working in the EC sector for 30 years and stills carries the light of passion, enthusiasm and love for EC. She talks about all things that inspires her and how even after 30 years she still lots of learn. She invites us to join on to the 'train' of excitement. Start talking about what you are doing to others. Listen to yourself and get excited about the things that you are doing. Because when you are excited,...

Joanne Tan has been working in the EC sector for 3 years and is from Indonesia. She spoke about the concept of sense of belonging and the complexities as migrants to find a space of belonging in a new country and in a new work environment. Joanne talks about how she feels to ‘fit in’ and often feeling intimidated by her colleagues who were all white Anglo-saxon Australian. She spoke about her journey of keeping her values and cultu...

Hakea Hustler is an award winning author of co-written books of Black Cockatoo, My Deadly Boots, Tracks of the Missing. She is also the co-owner of The Remote Teacher website providing resources to support teachers in remote community. She has passion for supporting and bringing teachers working in remote communities together. Successful teachers = positive outcomes for children and young people. 

"Sometimes we don’t realise that w...

Jessica Staines, founder of Koori Curriculum is an advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have brought a lot of culture awareness and education on respectfully embedding First Nation’s perspectives specifically in early childhood education sector. Jessica spoke about the comfort in the discomfort of questing our practices as well as the importance of knowing The Framework and legislative well when we are advocati...

Lynette Tah is an amazing, passionate and well articulated leader. Her journey is so inspiring as she has moved countries to find happiness. She spoke about the importance of reflective questions and how she unpacks her own vulnerabilities by questioning herself. Lynette is the perfect example to find the space where you belongs- somewhere that aligns with your values and beliefs – which in return is a space for you to grow and thr...

Anna Zhang is currently teaching in a non for profit early learning centre in Sydney. She spoke about her passion in early childhood which stems from her mentor who she had an amazing connection with during placement. Anna has a deep appreciation to the honest and constrictive feedback she had received and more importantly this has been a drive to achieve a high quality of education and leadership in her current practice. See below...

Laura Kerr and Jessica Branca have both worked together 4 years ago in an early learning centre. They are both pocket rocket filled with passion for early childhood education and their energy is infectious. They spoke about their drive for advocacy for children and how it translates into their curriculum and pedagogies by pushing boundaries and thinking outside the box but yet still delivering it within the policies and regulations...

In this episode, I sat down with Fiona Ye who is a kindergarten teacher in a small non for profit centre in Fairfield. Fiona spoke about her own experiences navigating the big ocean of early childhood and how she tackled the sharks swimming around her as a new beginning teacher. She also spoke very openly about the failures in her professional journey- and very inspiringly, she embraced them and used them as tools to improve her pr...

Dorianne Prinzi has been working in the sector for 20 years now and she is currently a Preschool Field Officer at Merri-Bek Council (previously known as Moreland). She spoke about her journey in the different roles she has been in and how privileged she is in the connections she had with families and children. She also unpacked the evolution of growth she has undertaken (and is still going) and how she is always looking at the posi...