Learning Together

Learning Together

25 October 2016

Nurtured at Home provides free professional development workshops for our community of Educators, families and whānau.  Workshops take place at a variety of venues such as community centres, Educator’s homes, our offices, and marae.  Holding workshops locally within each community helps to create a sense of belonging in adults and a sense of community as we all work together, gaining new knowledge and learning new skills – an Ako approach to learning and teaching.

Our professional development workshops are designed to be informative, celebrate current theory and trends, and involve a ‘hands-on’ approach so that learning is meaningful, appropriate to a homebased learning environment, and of course fun!  As workshops are tailored specifically for each community, we weave a strong focus of language, culture and identity throughout each one.  Educators take learning from workshops back into their homebased environment to share with children and families.  On visits to each Educator’s homes, our Visiting Teachers then support the learning journey for each Educator to take this knowledge and expand on it to support children’s interests and learning.

The Ministry of Education’s focus for professional development in early childhood education is on services being “more responsive to the identity, language and cultural needs of specific communities, particularly Māori and Pasifika.”  Nurtured at Home understands and supports this focus by continuing to provide free workshops for our Educators and their families on an ongoing basis – the first workshops offered were in 2014 when we first opened in Auckland.

Educators are carefully selected for their commitment and enthusiasm to providing quality care and education for our preschool children, and on-going professional development supports this.  Complemented with the guidance and support from our Visiting Teachers, who are all fully qualified early childhood teachers, and our commitment to providing quality and meaningful professional development for all of our Educators, Nurtured at Home ensures we are all working together to provide the best possible support for our families, whānau and our tamariki.