DVD Is an Outstanding Training Resource
Rose, a supervisor, talks about the supervisory relationship 
Yvette, a child welfare worker
Lindsey and Marlene: Supervision
Lindsey, a Head Start teacher
Marlene, a supervisor, reflects on her own internal process
Work with infants, young children, and their families are frequently complex, confusing, intense, and challenging. Often the needs are extensive and the available resources feel inadequate to address the wide range of stressors that are impacting the family. The new set of instructional materials, Finding the Words, Finding the Ways: Exploring Reflective Supervision and Facilitation, offers practitioners, instructors, and programs a new tool to build and deepen reflective supervision skills in a way that genuinely supports staff providing direct services across a variety of disciplines and settings.
The videos and accompanying manual are designed as learning materials to support reflective supervisors and others such as program managers, coordinators, consultants and coaches who are involved in providing support, and guidance to those in the infant and early childhood field.
The set includes four supervisory sessions. Each vignette was designed to illuminate supervisory dilemmas common to infant and early childhood programs. The four vignettes are from different types of settings, but the principles of reflective supervision are useful for those wanting to enrich their knowledge of reflective supervision skills. Each videotaped supervisory session also includes brief reflections by the supervisor and the supervisee, which provide further insight into the supervisory processes demonstrated in the vignette.
The videos, Finding the Words, Finding the Ways: Exploring Reflective Supervision and Facilitation, are improvisations built from carefully crafted vignettes. They are not scripted. The players in the videos are experienced supervisors and practitioners drawn from a variety of infant and early childhood programs. Each pair of clinicians decided how to explore their assigned situation. Improvisation allowed the participants to show typical supervisory processes, dynamics, and concerns in real life, while at the same time protecting the privacy of clients and practitioners.
Videos are helpful to illustrate how supervisory roles blend and support the critical work of early childhood staff. This medium offers a way to learn about the essential processes of reflective supervision such as tone, pacing and co-regulation which is not possible in written text.
The accompanying manual provides an overview of reflective supervision approaches. The manual includes suggestions and instructional materials for different ways the videos can be used in various learning settings.
Click here to order the Finding the Words, Finding the Ways: Exploring Reflective Supervision and Facilitation DVD today!
Posted by Leadership Team Member: Mary Claire Heffron, PhD
Clinical Director of the Early Childhood Mental Health Training Programs in the Early Intervention Services Unit at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland
Director of the Irving B. Harris Early Childhood Mental Health Training Program
