The California Association for the Education of Young Children held its annual conference in Pasadena in April, and 4 members of the First 5 ECCE Advisory Committee (as well as one F5H staff) attended. The Association for the Education of Young Children is the largest professional organization dedicated to high-quality early education, and is celebrating its centennial this year. CAAEYC is the state affiliate of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and Redwood Coast is the Humboldt/Del Norte chapter of CAAEYC.
First 5’s Early Child Care & Education committee functions to advise the Commission on matters of childcare policy, quality early education, and supporting the childcare workforce. Committee members who attended the conference were Sydney Fisher Larson, former Commissioner and CR faculty emeritus, and state and local board member of AEYC, Alicia Chivington, owner of Little Redwoods preschool in Redway, Ana Tejeda, Family Childcare Provider, Jennifer Black, Changing Tides Family Services Professional Development Manager, and Star Mohatt, First 5 staff support to the ECCE Committee. Alicia also brought 3 of her staff members, and Leah Sanders, a Eureka Family Childcare Provider and president of the Redwood Coast chapter of CAAEYC also attended, so Humboldt was well represented even though the conference was in Pasadena this year.
Highlights of the conference included the keynotes by “Teacher Tom” Hobson and Debbie LeeKeenan, an inspiring campaign speech for Vice President of the State Board by Leah Sanders, an exhibit hall full of resources, and too many workshops to name. Everyone chose different workshops to attend based on their roles, and some like Sydney, Jennifer, and Leah, as state board members, were also working much of the time.
I was excited to attend workshops with Ijumaa Jordan (she was here in Humboldt presenting at our conference a few years ago!), Jen Bradwell (Filmmaker of the Make a Circle movie!), Ronald Mah, who inspired me as a young teacher over 30 years ago, and still brought the same energy, humor and knowledge to his presentation now, and of course, finally getting to see Teacher Tom! (We were in contract with him to present at our conference in May of 2020…)