2026 International Early Childhood Inclusion Institute

Join us for an interactive, 3-hour preconference session designed for leaders, coaches, and educators committed to strengthening inclusive practices. Grounded in a tiered coaching framework and the Practice-Based Coaching model, this session explores how to match coaching strategies and resources to the unique needs of individual educators. Participants will learn how to use data to guide collaborative decision-making, ensuring coaching is both effective, personalized, and rooted in partnership. Through hands-on activities and real-world examples, we’ll examine ways to build trust, foster reflective practice, and create sustainable systems that support inclusion. Whether you’re new to coaching or refining your approach, you’ll leave with practical tools for aligning coaching intensity, format, and approach with educator goals and available resources. We will explore accessible materials that help you leverage powerful partnerships towards meaningful change for young children with disabilities and their families.

In this session, participants will examine their own beliefs and reactions to behaviors that challenge adults and plan intentional responses to neutralize implicit bias. Participants will then extend the problem-solving to planning targeted social-emotional instruction to prevent instances of behavior that challenges adults in the classroom. In addition to planning, participants will explore multisensory supports to include each and every learner in robust social-emotional learning in the classroom. Strategies will align to Pyramid Model implementation.

In this pre-conference session participants will examine how the tenets of Rightful Presence provide fundamental guideposts for inclusion and support intentionality in ways of engaging families, community members, and children.

Learning Objectives:
During this session, participants will:
Define the concept of Rightful Presence in early learning settings
Discuss how the tenets of Rightful Presence provide guideposts for planning toward inclusion
Practice leveraging the tenets when engaging families, community members, and children.

Opening and welcome: Dr. Brian Boyd, Director of FPG Child Development Institute, Chih-Ing Lim and Sherri Britt Williams, Co-Chairs of the Early Childhood Inclusion Institute will provide the opening remarks for this year's institute.

Keynote Address by Mychal Threets: Through stories, laughter, and reflections on mental health, Mychal ,shares his personal story about belonging and how challenges and barriers were addressed to make that happen.

When we say all children, do we really mean all? What does it take to ensure children with disabilities experience true belonging in early care and education settings? In this interactive session, we’ll explore what rightful presence looks like in practice and how to move inclusion from an add-on to an everyday commitment. Participants will engage in reflective mindset work and leave with practical foundations for creating environments and experiences where every child belongs. If you are new to early childhood inclusion or would like to have a space to prepare yourself for the conference experience, this session is for you.

This plenary centers the leadership and experiences of people with disabilities in exploring how belonging, agency, and self-advocacy take root in the earliest years. Framed by a discussion on rightful presence in early childhood systems, the session will examine how contexts, culture, and values can either strengthen or constrain a young child’s developing sense of agency and participation. Panelists will reflect on how their own early experiences shaped their sense of belonging, participation, and self-advocacy.

The purposes of the reflection session are:

• To set an intention for your time at the Institute.

• To reflect on the Keynote and Plenary sessions.

• Ensuring that you have an opportunity to connect, reflect, and build community.

The purposes of the reflection session are:

• To set an intention for your time at the Institute.

• To reflect on the Keynote and Plenary sessions.

• Ensuring that you have an opportunity to connect, reflect, and build community.

The purposes of the reflection session are:

• To set an intention for your time at the Institute.

• To reflect on the Keynote and Plenary sessions.

• Ensuring that you have an opportunity to connect, reflect, and build community.

The purposes of the reflection session are:

• To set an intention for your time at the Institute.

• To reflect on the Keynote and Plenary sessions.

• Ensuring that you have an opportunity to connect, reflect, and build community.

The purposes of the reflection session are:

• To set an intention for your time at the Institute.

• To reflect on the Keynote and Plenary sessions.

• Ensuring that you have an opportunity to connect, reflect, and build community.