The Preschool Podcast

Today I speak with Debbi Sluys, the Director of Growing Together Family Resource Centre in Blenheim, Ontario. Deb has many years of experience in early childhood education and I thought she would be a great person to host on the podcast because in her years of experience she has the perspective from being a teacher on the ground to being the Director of a child care program with multiple locations. We talk about what has changed in early childhood education since she first started in the field and what has made Growing Together such a successful organization, in particular the progressive culture that encourages discussion, learning, leadership and a sense of community.

In this episode of The Preschool Podcast with Jo and Maddie, our hosts talk about one of the biggest challenges in childcare: burnout.

WebMD describes burnout as “[A] form of exhaustion caused by constantly feeling swamped. It’s a result of excessive and prolonged emotional, physical, and mental stress. ... Burnout happens when you’re overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to keep up with life’s incessant demands.”

Sound familiar?

Jo and Maddie start the episode by sharing their own experiences with burnout, then consider other professions with high burnout rates and how they compare with early childhood education. From there, they discuss why burnout happens and how childcare providers can avoid it with suggestions from HiMama’s Early Childhood Education Blog and the HiMama Helps Webinar Series.

Join the conversation and share your thoughts in Circle Time!

Additional Resources on Burnout:

[Blog Post] Overcoming burnout in childcare

[Webinar] Addressing staff burnout at your childcare center

[Webinar] How to break burnout in 2021

In the first full episode of The Preschool Podcast with Jo and Maddie, our hosts discuss one of their favorite topics in early childhood education: Process vs Product.

What does it mean to focus on the process rather than the product when it comes to making art with young children?

Jo and Maddie start with a definition taken from our Circle Time Facebook Group:

Product-focused art has a right way and a wrong way to work on the project and typically requires a specific skill and technique to reach that end goal.

Process-focused art is when a child is given an open-ended project and they have the opportunity to express themselves through their work.

From there, our hosts dive into their own experiences with artwork in the classroom and share their personal educational philosophies. (Spoiler: Jo and Maddie are both Team Process.) Plus, ideas for process-based projects for holidays, communicating the benefits of process art with parents, and striking a balance between giving children the freedom to explore their creativity and preparing them for kindergarten and beyond.

Join the conversation and share your thoughts in Circle Time!

Welcome to the introductory episode of The Preschool Podcast with Jo and Maddie!

Get to know our new hosts as they share their journeys into early childhood education: their first days on the job, the struggles they faced, and their personal philosophies of education.

This episode also includes a Lightning Round where Jo and Maddie quiz each other on such hard-hitting questions as, “Coffee or Tea?” “Infants or Toddlers?” and “Circle Time or Free Play?”

Check it out, let us know what you think, and share your answers to our Lightning Round questions in the comments!

In this episode of The Preschool Podcast, we're revisiting our first-ever Preschool Podcast episode from July 2016! Ron Spreeuwenberg has the pleasure of interviewing Debbi Sluys the Director of Growing Together Family Resource Centre in Blenheim, Ontario. Debbi discussed what has changed in early childhood education since she first started in the field. And what has made Growing Together such a successful organization, in particular, the progressive culture that encourages discussion, learning, leadership, and a sense of community.