More Information about ECEpalooza
​powered by the Paradigm Project & the Sheva Center at JCC Association

For those who want additional learning beyond the main stage of ECEpalooza, choose an intensive to max out your experience. After a challenging year, surely we all owe it to ourselves to immerse in learning and invest in ourselves. Costs listed below include registration for ECEpalooza. More information will be posted here as it comes in!

Nurture by Nature
​A 4-day in-person nature education retreat
led by Ta’am Teva

July 19-22 (program begins at 8am on the 19th; hotel room and dinner available on the 18th)
$1,400 (Are finances a barrier? Reach out to [email protected] so that we can help.)
​Space limited to 25 people.

Ta'am Teva is Hebrew for "taste of nature." It is also the name of Chicago’s Jewish nature preschool. Join a group of early childhood educators as we investigate best practices for working with children outdoors. During this intensive program we will explore how to assess and maximize your school’s natural spaces as well as ways to establish safety protocols for outdoor play. We will discuss how to foster and document an emergent curriculum outdoors. These sessions will also highlight Jewish values relating to children and nature as well as provide hands on experiences you can take back to your classrooms and schools this fall.  

Facilitators are field experts Margie Pines, Megan Gessler, and Holly Krakow.
All sessions will be held outdoors. All participants and facilitators must be fully vaccinated.

The experience includes:
  • 4-night stay in a single room at the Eaglewood Hotel and Spa, Itasca, IL (near the Chicago O’Hare Airport)
  • Three meals a day (plus snacks!) provided by Zelda’s Kosher Catering (should anyone require it, food will be Cholov Yisroel)
  • All materials
  • Books, to be mailed to participants ahead of the experience

Transportation is the responsibility of the participant.​

The History of Early Childhood Policy and Funding
​A 6-hour workshop series
with Danielle Ewen, Helen Blank, and Shma Koleinu

July 20-22, 1-3pm ET
$450
​
With so much advocacy work ahead to make our schools affordable for families, highest quality for children, and able to properly compensate educators, we need to take a big step back to understand the history of ECE policy in the United States. Leading this series are two giants of the field. Click here to read more about Helen Blank and Danielle Ewen.

Managing to Change the World
​A 2-day crash course
with the Management Center

July 12-13, 12-6pm ET
$1,025
​Space limited to 40 people

This fast-paced online course in the basics of effective management will offer key lessons, skills and tools on how to ensure that your team will get great results. Founded for non-profit leaders, the Management Center runs immensely popular 2-day workshops, and the Paradigm Project has hosted the organization at a past Pop-Up Conference.

Learn more about The Management Center and our facilitator Melinda Spooner.

Below are the core aspects of the syllabus.​

Choice Points for Equity and Inclusion
We all operate with unconscious bias that reflects and reinforces systems of oppression. Identifying, mitigating, and counteracting racial and other kinds of bias is like swimming upstream, and even the most committed managers miss opportunities to advance equity and inclusion in their everyday practice. The good news is that it is possible to learn to be equity-conscious by becoming aware of your own power to advance equity and acting on it. Regularly looking for opportunities to shift the status quo can create cumulative change that will help level the playing field for marginalized people in your organizations. 
 
The Delegation Cycle: From Expectations to Results
Whether the work you need is straightforward or complex, the same basic principles apply: you have to be clear about your expectations, stay engaged enough to increase the likelihood of success, and hold people accountable for what they deliver. We’ll share the best strategies for clearly assigning responsibility to your staff. You’ll also have the opportunity to practice delegation using your own real-life examples and receive peer feedback to help you identify what you’re doing well and potential areas of improvement.
 
Managing Broad Responsibilities: Roles and Goals 
While delegation of specific tasks is a crucial skill, in order to achieve the most ambitious results, you’ll need to successfully shift the ownership of broader responsibilities to your team in order to free yourself up to take on the work that only you can do. In this session, you’ll learn how to define roles and goals more clearly so that every person on your team is guided and propelled by two forces: their unique contribution to the organization and clarity on what success in their role looks like. We’ll also share how to approach role and goal setting with a focus on equity and inclusion, so that you can support a diverse team to thrive.
 
Managing Up 
Learn how to work with your manager–as well as colleagues over whom you don’t have formal authority–with maximum effectiveness and minimum frustration. We’ll cover how to get aligned with your manager, how to make it easier to move work forward, how to focus on your “sphere of control,” and the importance of being emotionally intelligent. Participants will have the opportunity to apply their learning to a real-life challenge they are currently facing in working with their manager.
 
Developing Your Team
We’ll cover key techniques that managers can use to foster a sense of belonging on a team, how to develop staff members’ skills, and how to make feedback a tool for development. You’ll learn tips for delivering feedback more effectively and will have an opportunity to practice with a peer. We’ll also address how to handle serious performance problems.

​The Boulder Journey School Annual Conference
with private ECEpalooza breakout sessions
​led by Judi Morosohk and Boulder Journey School staff
SOLD OUT

June 24-25 (conference); follow-up break out sessions June 28 & July 19 from 4-6pm ET

This is one of our favorite conferences, hosted by a learning community that inspires us. Choose this intensive and you attend the Boulder Journey School conference as part of the ECEpalooza delegation. We will be a cohort that discusses and reflects on the conference together.

STEM Education in ECE
Take a 4-credit undergraduate course in ECE
with American Jewish University

SOLD OUT

May 25-June 28
with live sessions
​on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7-8:30 pm ET

This course is designed for early childhood educators and specialists. Through special topics, the course explores the development of math, engineering, physics, and science curiosity in young children. Emphasis is placed on STEM and STEAM in the early childhood classroom.
​

Here is a rough look at how the sessions shake out

Sometimes it is helpful to get a birds eye view of how these sessions play out across the summer.
​The schedule below does not include the AJU course on STEM Education.
​The schedule is subject to change, and we expect to add a few more sessions.
​All times listed in Eastern Daylight Time

With thanks to the Jewish United Fund...

ECEpalooza relies on in-kind support from the Jewish United Fund. We are grateful!