Davis North America: NeuroInclusivty for Early Years

Article by Sue Hall

In 2023, The Whole Dyslexic Society (WDS) heard that the Ministry of Education and Child Care in British Columbia, was inviting new opportunities for the professional development of Early Childhood Educators

One of our WDS Board, Julie Brewer, who is a Montessori Early Childhood Educator had attended a Davis Learning Strategies for K-3 teachers Workshop and adapted the tools and strategies for her pre-school 3-5 yr olds…with incredible and unexpected success.  All the children learned to relax, to control their energy levels, to focus, and master their alphabet letters individually… regardless of their innate learning style.   

This success gave us the courage to apply and to our shock and delight, we were awarded the grant!  It was a RUSH !  Acceptance arrived in August 2023, paperwork was signed in October and the whole pilot had to be completed by the end of January 2024.  No pressure!

We built the pilot course, NeuroInclusivity for Early Years, around the Davis Learning Strategies and it attracted an incredible response from the ECEs…  60 enquiries within one week!  Who wouldn’t want their children to self-manage for free?  We conducted interviews, our Administrator got everyone familiar with the Thinkific e-learning platform and then it was all systems go!

Accessibility, ECEs with very little spare time and no funding for substitutes led us decide on live webinars which we recorded and placed on their Thinkific accounts.  The modules pre the two day  Davis Learning Strategies for Early Years Workshop explained why learning challenges arise and the history of DLS.  Julie and I adapted the DLS for K-3 Manual and we were thrilled when Stacey Smith agreed to deliver both the online and in person workshops. Both were successful but the in person had the extra fun and community element.

ECEs then completed weekly Assignments, for Release, Dial, Focus and Koosh ball toss respectively.  Some ECEs got to individual Letter Mastery in the time frame.  Julie compiled completed assignments into a Google Evaluation form and the colourful pie charts confirmed it was a huge success.

Some of the ECEs want to continue to the end of June and some are even planning their next academic year.

I have attended a great deal of professional development and this was by far, the most inspiring, engaging and applicable by a long shot.

The children have ownership in the atmosphere of their classroom and can help themselves, friends, and teachers to kindly check on each other.

The release technique in particular has been a game-changer for our group of 20 kids. The difference in attention for our circle times since using release has been absolutely incredible!

So what now?  The Ministry of Education and Child Care has our report, and so far radio silence, but we (the WDS) are determined more ECEs have this opportunity. We know that these tools can ensure that those who might have been seen to learn differently, never have a learning disability label attached to them.

We are deeply grateful to all those who took part in a very exciting, profoundly beneficial professional development pilot.  Hugs all round 😊thank you.