The Leadership Lab: An Ongoing Pedagogical Partnership Focused on Nurturing a Humanity-Driven Approach to Leadership

4-Part Leadership Series with Mary Hewitt
September 10th, October 6th, November 17th, & December 8th

Session 1: The Role of Trust in Leadership - Leadership without trust often reduces teams to focusing on compliance, defensiveness, and hiding—instead of creativity, collaboration, and commitment. Reflecting on the work of Stephen Covey, for this virtual gathering, we will be exploring how leaders can build trust within teams and what this “looks like” in early childhood settings with educators.

Session 2: What Does it Mean to Be in Relationship? - Making the Harder Conversations Easier - In our culture, we often view relationships as healthy and successful when there is no friction, varying of opinions, or disagreement and pushback. During this virtual gathering, we will challenge this assumption and uncover what really happens in relationships when we simply ‘go with the flow’ in any and all circumstances. We will also discuss what it means to shift this narrative of relationships so we can anticipate natural ‘bumps in the road’ and create a more expansive, realistic, nutritive understanding of what it means to truly live, work, and play together.

Session 3: Scaffolding Isn’t Just for the Children - During our leadership retreat, we learned that the primary role of a leader is to “make more leaders”. At this virtual gathering, we will build on this understanding by examining key parallels between what it means to foster agency in children and what it means to scaffold and empower the adults caring for children. In applying the same principles we do with children, we recognize how we already have the skillsets to “make more leaders”, we simply need to thoughtfully translate this so it applies to the relationship dynamics between supervisors and educators.

Session 4: Circling Back to Humanity-Driven Leadership and Reflecting on our Growth - In this virtual gathering, we will reflect on how our mindset, practices, and relationships have shifted thus far by revisiting key humanity-driven leadership concepts and our vision boards from March 2026. Leaders will use the ‘3 Roots and a Shoot’ protocol: reflecting on three areas of deeply anchored, well-established strengths they’ve established AND one new area of growth that requires specific nurturing to bloom.

Although these are some of the core concepts we will cover, I am also very aware that pedagogical partnerships like this often evolve in-the-moment with the learning community. Having some flexibility in there to 'meander' in meaningful ways can often make these experiences more engaging (and useful!) for everyone.

Facilitator Bio:

Mary Hewitt, founder of Unlocking Childhood, is an experienced public speaker, author, and early years sector consultant. With 16 years in the early learning field as a classroom educator, early childhood education professor, and early years system leader—she leverages her expertise to develop engaging and meaningful learning experiences for communities.

Mary holds a Masters degree in Early Childhood Education, a Bachelor of Education degree, a diploma in Early Childhood Education, and a Psychology degree. She has captivated audiences of hundreds and has delivered her work in a variety of contexts from large-scale arenas to individual classrooms. Mary offers keynotes, facilitated workshops, pedagogical partnerships, virtual sessions, and even one-on-one coaching and consultations. 

In 2025, Mary was selected by a peer-reviewed panel and presented at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) conference in Orlando, Florida—the largest gathering of early childhood educators in the world. She has appeared as a guest on several podcasts and as a writer for various publications. She is currently writing a book on trauma-informed care in early childhood education with Redleaf Press.

Mary credits her eclectic experiences, extensive education, and neurodivergent mind for her dynamic approach—and is passionate about sharing it with the world! Mary resides in rural Ontario with her husband and beloved dog.

Participation:

Participants will be given the link to the video and are required to participate in one of two ways-- with a microphone/built in speaker or through the chat. In addition there will be a log tracking which members contribute and which do not, and those that do not contribute will not receive PD hours. We ask that you leave your camera on for the session.