Written by Julie Higginbotham, Senior Case Coordinator, Mecklenburg County CDSA; Additional contribution by Peggy Kemp, Infant-Toddler Technical Assistance Specialist, Kansas Inservice Training System (KITS)
Happy New Year everyone! EI Excellence is excited to be heading into the new year with new ideas and thinking about new ways to connect with early intervention professionals around the world! The new year brings along thoughts of change and improvement for a lot of folks, and we wanted to share a cool email we got a few months ago from one of our followers in Kansas. Peggy Kemp, Ph.D., IMH-ET (IV), is an Infant-Toddler Technical Assistance Specialist with the Kansas Inservice Training System (KITS) through the Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities. She reached out with this great blog idea around the concept that our work is not about us. When we asked for some more info about her thoughts, this is what she shared:
“Well… a long time ago, M’Lisa [Sheldon] was in Kansas doing her first boot camp, and she said “It’s not about us.” That has stuck with me as a change statement since that time. When things get hard… when change is difficult… we stop and reflect on the truth that “It’s not about us.” For me, that means not about our comfort with change… not about the need for us to learn new things. But our true focus is on moving forward for parents and realizing that the practices we choose need to be practices that support the parent’s competence and confidence, our first filter by which to make decisions about practice.
Again, from M’Lisa…. M’Lisa stated in a workshop that when discussing the practices used with others, we need to make a strong statement that THIS IS EI in 2016. To me that was the rally call our practitioners needed. They were not doing things different or wrong or new… THIS IS EI!
These are my go-to phrases now for a number of situations, and I thought combining both pretty much sums up what we, in EI are all about…. “It’s not about us… This is Early Intervention in 2016!”
Think about that – we have an amazing opportunity here to move forward in the new year by being really intentional in our work, and it’s going to keep doing just that…moving forward. Thanks to Peggy for sharing her rally call….what’s yours?
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