Thursday, March 20, 2025
The 2025 Leadership Summit
The SECA Leadership Summit is a one-day event held on Thursday, March 20, 2025. Educators from across the country will visit various off-site early childhood centers and end with an afternoon discussion. Please note that this event is partially off-site meaning you will not be able to attend any workshop sessions from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm during the SECA conference. Leadership Summit will begin with tours that will leave at 9:00 am and conclude around 1:00 pm. Upon returning to the conference site, participants will conclude the day with an afternoon tea and table discussions about effective leadership with an amazing group of SECA FOSSILS. Space is limited, so please register early.
Friday, March 21, 2025
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Friday Keynote Speaker
The Healing Power of Play and Optimism
Steve Gross
The Healing Power of Play and Optimism
Optimism is powerful. When human beings strengthen their ability to see and focus on the goodness and value in themselves, others, and the world around them, their social, emotional and cognitive superpowers emerge. Optimism, however, is fragile. Chronic stress, fear and overwhelming adversity can weaken and destroy our capacity for optimism. This inspiring presentation by Steve Gross, helps Early Childhood Professionals discover the power of optimism to create safe, loving, joyful, and engaging environments where kids can heal, grow and thrive. Using research, humor and personal stories from 30+ years of work with kids and their caretakers Steve will share how practicing optimism can bring out the best in ourselves, our colleagues and our children.
​Meet Steve Gross
In the late 1980s, Steve Gross, MSW, began running playgroups for homeless children in Greater Boston. His only goal was to help our most vulnerable kids.
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His focus on play, joy, relationships, and environment caught the attention of trauma response experts. By the early 90s, Steve was called upon to lead widespread healing efforts for communities impacted by war, natural disaster, gun violence, poverty, addiction, and illness.
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Following his field experience, Steve and a trusted team of researchers and colleagues developed the Life is Good Playmaker Project - a series of transformative workshops, retreats, and tools that serve more than 16,000 Early Childhood professionals and help more than 1 million kids overcome trauma every year.
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Today, Steve inspires audiences with true stories of how optimism can be harnessed to overcome adversity, and how early childhood educators can cultivate a more optimistic disposition to insulate children against toxic stress and create life-changing relationships to help them heal, learn and grow.
Just for Students Breakfast
Students Start YOUR Engine!!
Lisa Maddox Vinson
(Student registration Required)
Students, get ready to join us for breakfast and dive into a morning of interactive STEM learning. STEM, an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, is an educational approach that combines these four areas of study. It's student-centered and interdisciplinary, encouraging you to develop problem-solving skills. We have prepared hands-on activities to engage you and prepare your engine for the day. We are looking forward to seeing you there! And don't forget, we have some exciting giveaways you won't want to miss!
Friday Luncheon Speaker
Your Voice Matters
Audrey Rowland
(additional registration fee)
The Preschool Revolution: Building a Culture of Equity from the Start
How do we approach talking about bias, diversity, race and differences with children? Creating a culture of diversity in classrooms is more than just multicultural books and posters. Biases are developed during infancy and toddlerhood when learning happens unconsciously. We will take a look at how these hidden messages are formed and what we can do to change them. As early childhood providers, it is critical that we bring this work to the top of the curriculum, disrupting bias before it becomes unconscious.​
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Meet Audrey Rowland
Audrey Rowland has over 20 years of experience as an early childhood professional. Drawing from her expertise as a teacher, administrator and parent, Audrey founded Green Space Learning in Fort Worth, Texas, to provide resources and professional development for early educators, administrators, parents and policy-makers.
She and her team conduct in-person trainings and workshops for parents of young children and early childhood educators, develop and construct natural outdoor playspaces and provide consultation to develop age-appropriate indoor environments for early childhood centers.
Green Space Nature Preschools serve families in the Fort Worth area and provide nature-based, outdoor learning for infants – kindergarten.
Audrey firmly believes in the importance of play in childrens' development – playing to learn. Through play, children are capable and competent to construct their own knowledge of the world around them.
Audrey serves as the President of the Texas Associating for the Education of Young Children. Audrey earned a MS from the University of North Texas in Child Development and Family Studies and an MBA from Texas Woman’s University.