Creating a Vibrant Community
We recognize that children’s joy of learning and success in life depends on their caregivers’ quality of life—including their parents, guardians, and educators. With ECESF’s mission at our core, we work to strengthen the ECE community by bringing educators together, providing an opportunity to deepen our understanding of issues and policies facing us, identify priorities, and build a vision prioritizing 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.
Please 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 the types of ECESF gatherings we currently offer:
For ECESF board members, teacher, administrator, and pedagogical leaders dedicated to growing ECESF and organizing a strong educator voice rooted in our mission, vision, and principles.
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.
For early care educators, pedagogues, or administrators to reflect on your unique needs and experiences in small affinity groups. Join us to go deeper into teaching, life, learning, community, and other topics. Focus groups are facilitated by ECESF core leaders as a starting place to get to know ECESF.
For you to bring your authentic self, get to know each other and the ECE landscape. ECESF lounges are an informal space allowing for the important connections and dynamic thinking that often occur in the staff lounge or outside of the workplace. These gatherings help bring new ideas to our other meetings and events.
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!