I am a teacher and team leader with many years of experience working with Year 0/1. I am passionate about working alongside children in supporting their social and emotional development which leads to fostering their executive functioning skills. I have led a team of teachers to embrace, create and have a growth mindset. We implemented a play-based learning approach within the junior school, which was exciting, challenging, and innovative. I believe in looking at the whole child as the curriculum empowers their learning as well as ours and learning through play allows children to naturally thrive and discover in their world. My driving force is to support teachers in creating learning environments that are fun, playful, full of wonder and provide an array of positive learning experiences for all children. The structured literacy approach is also a new development in many New Zealand schools, something we implemented into our junior school last year. Integrating play, foundation skills, math, science, social studies, literacy, arts, key competencies, and all the other areas we teach can be done in a play-based classroom.