0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today I'm so jazzed to share today's special episode with you. It's a sneak peek into our 2025 Seed Teacher Summit coming at you March 11th to the 13th. We're so grateful to have a brand new batch of incredible speakers this year and so many essential topics like Connecting with Kids who Challenge You, How to Handle Weapon Play at School, and Resilience for Educators. This is going to be a compilation episode with little snippets from a handful of the interviews just to give you a taste of what's to come and see if it's right for you. The Summit is free, F -R -E -E, to watch, so please share it with any...

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today we get to talk about a topic that I really need consistently just around me in my space. We got to dive into learning to parent in the language of play with Georgie Wisen -Vincent. She co -authored with Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, one of my favorite parenting authors, their new book, The Way of Play. Georgie is the founder and director of the PlayStrong Institute, a center devoted to the study, research, and practice of play therapy through a neurodevelopment lens, along with Dr. Bryson, the founder and executive director of the Center for Connection, a multidisciplinary clinical practice in Southern...

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I am hanging out with our very own Rachel Lounder. We got to chat about what it was like for her receiving stage four cancer diagnosis when Nora was just about to turn two, and parenting through it, and even now today, seven and a half years later, eight years later, what it looks like and how it shows up for her. If you know anyone who has received a cancer diagnosis, if you have received a cancer diagnosis, I hope this is helpful. We talk about things that were helpful for her, things that weren't helpful for her, and how her journey on the emotional side of this has ebbed and flowed and evolved....

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village. And today I get to hang out with Stefanie Hohl, who has a master's in education and has been teaching children to read for years. She holds advanced degrees in both children's literature and early education, and she has experience running preschool, homeschool, and local storytime programs. Stefanie developed the ABC: See, Hear, Do, Learn to Read method to make early reading fun and easy for kids and their parents. Stefanie lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, five children, and two very silly dogs. I really enjoyed this conversation because I don't know a lot about teaching kids to read. And I do know that...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I get to hang out with Kate Hamilton. She is married to Charlie since 2000 and is a mother of two young adult men who are independent, confident, and productive college students. Some might say she's an unlikely writer because of her dyslexia, yet her life experiences compelled her to write The Imperfect Parent: A Nonjudgmental Guide to Raising Children in the Modern World. She earned an MBA in international business and is a former corporate executive turned mother and entrepreneur. When Kate is not coaching parents and their children, you'll find her volunteering with Lemonade Day, a...

 0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and in this episode, Rach and I chatted all about when kids are saying like rude things to you, those hurtful phrases that really dig deep, things like, you're stupid and all that jazz, you're the worst mom in the world. We also have way more about this in our book, Big Kids, Bigger Feelings, publishing in the fall of 2025. Snag that bad boy wherever books are sold. It is going to be packed full of stuff for navigating the elementary years that like kindergarten to fifth grade range, where we know a lot of these phrases. You're like, where did my sweet little human go? And why are they saying these rude things...

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I get to share a friend of mine with you. Dr. Patrick Makokoro is a social entrepreneur, an early childhood development practitioner, an educational researcher with extensive experience working in community and international development. I got to meet Patrick when we were both presenting at the World Forum for Early Childhood Education. I met him in Panama, and then we both bound up seeing each other again. We were selected as experts for UNESCO, for United Nations Education Congress, and there were nine experts selected globally, and he and I were each there and just ran into each other. He is a human who...

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today I got to hang out with Pepper Stetler. She is the author of A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother's Reckoning with the IQ Test. She writes extensively on issues facing people with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, the Progressive. Pepper is a professor of art history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she lives with her husband and daughter, Louisa. I love this conversation because it is not just about folks with intellectual disabilities. We talked about school systems and how they are not set up systemically to...

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today I got a little fired up on this episode. We get to talk about the crucial missing component to fixing child care systems. I got to hang out with Jamee Herbert. She's the CEO and co -founder of BridgeCare, which is a woman -led software company that helps government agencies and nonprofit organizations manage their early care and education ecosystems. BridgeCare is driven by the mission to make high quality early childhood education accessible and affordable for everyone, especially low -income families and communities of color who often face the most barriers to access. After spending a decade in...

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today I got to hang out with two pediatricians to chat about why time in nature matters for kids and how do you overcome those barriers to outdoor time. I hung out with Pooja Tandon and Danette Glassy, both doctors who work with children and have done research in this space. Dr. Tandon is a general pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children's Hospital, an Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and the Director of Health at the Trust for Public Land. She has published widely on the importance of physical activity, outdoor time, and nature contact for health. And she...