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.

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.

To effectively support all preschool children, including those with disabilities, it's essential to understand each child's developmental level and use appropriate adaptations to guide instruction. This session will focus on using developmental indicators to understand a child’s current development and determine the next learning target. Participants will also explore how to adapt the environment, materials, and instruction to meet individual needs. The STEMIE Guide to Adaptations will be used as a framework to support participants as they work through a case study on selecting needed adaptations. ,

Families of infants and toddlers regularly seek out child care for their children--however for children with disabilities finding care that not only provides access for their families but a true sense of belonging remains challenging. This session will provide research, resources, and strategies for supporting inclusive child care systems for infants and toddlers with disabilities and developmental delays. We will focus on state and program-level barriers and opportunities for Part C early intervention and child care systems to work together to create meaningful and inclusive experiences for families. Participants will leave with reflection tools to bring back home to impact infants and toddlers in their states and communities.

Presenters will share stories from a variety of communities that have used the ECTA Community Indicators to leverage local partnerships to support children based on family strengths and needs. During this time, participants will 1) explore examples of challenges solved at the local level through intentional community partnerships, 2) reflect on potential partnerships in their own communities, and 3) consider both opportunities and challenges for building impactful community partnerships in their local context. Questions for reflection and conversation during this part of the session will include:

• What can we learn from intentionally constructed community partnerships to improve outcomes for children and families within the community?
• How have community partners efficiently used family voice to improve opportunities for young children?
• What has been the impact of community partnerships on children, families, educators, and leaders?
• How could strategies be adapted for your local community?

This interactive session explores how the Pyramid Coaching Model can be expanded beyond classroom practice into community based and cross sector systems that support young children, families, and the adults who care for them. Using real world examples from large scale implementation efforts, participants will examine how reflective coaching strengthens educator confidence, promotes family belonging, and builds sustainable partnerships across agencies and community stakeholders.
A featured systems case example will highlight the adaptation of Pyramid Model principles within community safety partnerships, including collaboration with police force leadership and family support systems through the Positive Solutions for Families Train the Trainers model. This example demonstrates how Pyramid practices can be translated into relationship based leadership, prevention, and regulation strategies that strengthen trust and belonging across the broader community.
Participants will engage in reflective dialogue and practical planning around how coaching infrastructures, implementation teams, and family centered partnerships can be leveraged to create inclusive systems change that is sustainable, equitable, and culturally responsive.
Participant Outcomes
By the end of the session, participants will:

• Explore advanced applications of the Pyramid Coaching Model across systems
• Learn how Positive Solutions for Families train the trainers structures strengthen community capacity
• Analyze a cross sector example integrating Pyramid practices with police and family systems
• Identify strategies for building sustainable inclusive community partnerships
• Develop one action step for expanding belonging in their own implementation context

Data demonstrating inclusive opportunities for children with disabilities has long been stagnant. This is largely because it is very difficult for states to unify and align systems that support high-quality inclusion across fragmented early childhood environments (e.g. public schools, Head Start, community-based childcare and home-based care.) This session showcases the journey for two states two years after receiving intensive technical assistance aimed at implementing inclusive practices statewide. Leaders will highlight bright spots, showcasing how they have supported systems with a shared purpose around inclusive early childhood education. Leaders will also share the persistent challenges that hinder progress for children, families and providers in programs. Facilitators will guide discussions that help participants to uncover innovative, cross-sector solutions to ensure access, participation and belonging for children with disabilities across the system. Participants will leave with a toolkit of strategies to support implementation and sustainability of policies and practices in their own mixed-delivery early childhood systems.

Data demonstrating inclusive opportunities for children with disabilities has long been stagnant. This is largely because it is very difficult for states to unify and align systems that support high-quality inclusion across fragmented early childhood environments (e.g. public schools, Head Start, community-based childcare and home-based care.) This session showcases the journey for two states two years after receiving intensive technical assistance aimed at implementing inclusive practices statewide. Leaders will highlight bright spots, showcasing how they have supported systems with a shared purpose around inclusive early childhood education. Leaders will also share the persistent challenges that hinder progress for children, families and providers in programs. Facilitators will guide discussions that help participants to uncover innovative, cross-sector solutions to ensure access, participation and belonging for children with disabilities across the system. Participants will leave with a toolkit of strategies to support implementation and sustainability of policies and practices in their own mixed-delivery early childhood systems.

Supporting young children when their behavior feels challenging is one of the most common and complex parts of early childhood work. We all have strategies, but even when we use our best tools, those moments can still leave us feeling disconnected, worn down, or unsure of what to do next. Especially when things feel hard, how we use practices matters just as much as which ones we choose. This session focuses on the adult side of supporting young children whose behavior can feel challenging to understand and support. Rather than adding more tools to an already full toolbox, participants will explore a small set of research-supported “quarter turns” to bring more intention to the practices they already use. Participants will leave with practical ways to shift from a focus on behavior or children as challenging toward a broader, belonging-centered approach that supports stronger relationships, more responsive interactions, and inclusive, caring classroom communities.

We will cover the topics of trauma and substance use disorders. What is trauma? How does it present in families and children and what can we do as early educators or advocates to create a trauma-responsive environment? What is Substance Use Disorder? What are the barriers and stigmas that pregnant and parenting mothers with SUD face when seeking out child care and treatment?  We will also discuss what it means to "heal generations" and the holistic and family-centered approach we take to empower families through accessing early education, therapy, intervention, and other services at Horizons and beyond in a trauma-responsive environment.

UNC Horizons Program is a substance use disorder treatment program for pregnant and/or parenting women and their children, including those whose lives have been touched by abuse and violence. In 1993, UNC Horizons was created as a response to a significant need in North Carolina for a treatment and recovery program for pregnant and mothering women – one that helped to resolve the issues of drug use that are specific to women and their families, and one that kept those families together. Now, 250 women are touched each year – more than 5,000 since the program started – by Horizons’ integrated prenatal care and substance use disorder treatment, trauma-informed recovery practices, inpatient and outpatient treatment, career counseling, housing assistance, case management, family therapy and a 5-star child development center for our clients’ children.