Issue #6 of the Here & Now, ECPN’s newsletter engages with Reimagining the role of ‘educating early childhood educators’ in BC. Last month’s edition of the Here & Now highlighted issues raised by ECEBC’s call to radically reimagine The Role of the Early Childhood Educator (ECE) in British Columbia. This month’s issue extends this important conversation by asking: what kind of education might need to be in place to realize this new vision?

In working with educators and student educators, authors ECPN Co-Directors Veronica Pacini-Ketchebaw and Kathleen Kummen often hear about struggles with language. Concepts such as pedagogy, colonialism, neoliberalism, and common worlds are terms used in the BC Early Childhood Pedagogy Network (ECPN) that are often met with hesitation. They are words that do not feel “natural” to many educators, yet we see them as vital to the project of early education. In this article, we want to open a conversation by arguing that reading difficult texts is worth the struggle.