Creating a Vibrant Community
We recognize that children’s joy of learning and success in life depends on their caregivers’ (parents, guardians, and educators) quality of life. With ECESF’s mission at our core, we work to strengthen the ECE community by bringing center educators together, collaborating with family child care educators and the ECE community, and providing opportunities to deepen our understanding of the issues and policies facing us, identify priorities, and build a vision supportive of caregiving and caregivers.
ECESF holds regular meetings, get-togethers, and special events to support educator personal and workplace well-being; promote leadership; network with other educators; and include your voice in ongoing discussions which impact educator work and livelihood. Special events include topical workshops, guest speakers, collaborative initiatives, or an event on a topic you would like to introduce. Educator perspectives brought to these gatherings help inform San Francisco and statewide policy discussions
Check out our latest conversations in ECESF Updates.
Join the conversation. Fill out the ECESF interest form (English, Español, 中文) to help us plug you into the meetings, events, and communications most meaningful to you. Below are some of the ways we come together.
ECESF Events We Hold
For ECESF board members and teacher, administrator, and pedagogical leaders dedicated to growing ECESF and organizing a strong educator voice rooted in our mission, vision, and principles. Meetings most often held virtually.
For teachers to reimagine and get to know both ECE issues and other educators more deeply. We come together in ECESF teachers’ meetings to gain information, evaluate priorities, and plan steps to make change. Often held virtually.
ECESF educators hold special events and coordinate groups to attend ECE-relevant events together. From meeting in a park to leadership recognition events, the Children, Youth, and Families Summit, increasing awareness of the SEQUAL Survey, and meet and greet outreach events—ECESF educators create meaningful ways for educators to come together.
Onsite educators’ perspective of what is needed to support and improve our work is crucial to making real change. Through our work together as educators we identify priorities, then meet with other communities, official and community leaders to affect change. This includes co-leading the SF ECE Advocacy Coalition, sending representatives to the local planning council (CPAC) and other ECE-relevant meetings, and meeting with San Francisco Department of Early Childhood as well as elected officials.
Events
Check the event calendar for upcoming ECE community events, including ECESF highlighted and special events.
ECESF Special Events
While we come together in different ways, all ECESF convenings offer peer to peer sharing, covering topics related to our mission and principles, including, but not limited to:
- Fair Compensation: teacher stipends, pay parity movement
- Workplace conditions: staffing, paid prep time, labor laws
- Equity and social justice issues in the workplace
- Teacher retention, belonging, and support
- Understanding current ECE systems and funding
- How to organize a powerful ECE movement
- Connecting ECE with other social issues/movements
- Current issues, policy, and advocacy for ECE
- Mental Health, wellness, and wellbeing
- COVID: PPE/Guidelines
- Unemployment, social services, and other resources
- Topics related to our mission and introduced by participants
Our ECE system is complex and can be difficult to understand, explain, and improve. Early educators often do not have the opportunity to reflect with one another at their own site, let alone with educators working across the city. San Francisco and California ECE policy and program meetings are often missing the voices of early care educators working directly with children and families. ECESF offers educators a place to delve deeper into the policy world, both making sense of it through an educator lens, and accessing experts to answer our questions we identify.
By creating space to reflect and plan together, we build a common understanding, create a vision for caregiving and caregivers that values and supports children, families, and educators, and identify priorities and points of unity to effectively make change. We invite you to join us and together we can make the change we need!