Meet Elly, who works in a Leadership Support role at The Harbour.

Elly began her career in early childhood as a trainee in 2018 while she was undertaking the Certificate III course, and in 2022 she completed her Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care.

In her spare time Elly enjoys watching movies, listening to music, campaign and 4×4 exploration on the weekends. She’s also a big dachshund lover and has two of her own at home.

Tell us about your role as Leadership Support and what it involves

My role at the harbour is leadership support in a 0–2-year-old room. 

As an educator, I strive to demonstrate and role model holistic decision making with strong focus of guiding and motivating my fellow colleagues in providing the children within our Gowrie community, the same. As lead support, it’s important I am embedding a high-quality ECEC in line with approved early learning frameworks and supporting my leader with this also. It’s also important we implement Gowrie’s purpose, philosophy, policies, and procedures in all we do.

I feel is very important to build strong and reciprocal relationships with families, as this always gives the best outcome when we are all consistent and on the same page.

A big part of my role is day-to-day responsibility for program safety and compliance.

Some of those responsibilities include checking and closing child incident reports, making sure educators are signing in and out, headcounts for children and more.

What do you love most about working at Gowrie?

Something I love about working for Gowrie is we have such an inclusive community environment, so it is very important to me that I am also demonstrating the above mentioned for all the children who attend the centre and walk through our room’s doors.

Not only with the children is this felt, but amongst my colleagues, as it is a family feel and if I ever need something, a conversation, advice or just a coffee date to decompress, I know I can lean on the wonderful friendships I have made.

Why did you want to work in early childhood education and care?

Honestly, I never really thought about early years as a career, I always loved babysitting family friends’ children and taking care of them, and felt I had a strong maternal instinct, so when I saw a traineeship through an organisation being advertised, I thought why not!

I remember my first time being on the floor as an interviewee and I felt so calm, I knew this was something I was meant to do!

Zara (L) and Ziggy (R)

What are you most passionate about in your work?

I find great pride and passion in supporting trainees and students as I began my journey this way, and they are the future educators so it’s important to help them along their journey with as much advice and guidance as possible.

Do you have any handy tips or advice for other educators?