Louise Demers: A partner in early childhood development

Year: 2018 – Province: Quebec

Certificate of Achievement Recipient

Louise Demers

Centre de la petite enfance de la Chaudière—Installation La Brindille
1026, rue du Basilic
Lévis, QC G6Z 1E7

Telephone: 418-839-5070
Website: https://gw.micro-acces.com/cpest-jean/Publique/Accueil.aspx (in French only)

 

Type of setting: Daycare for children ages 0 to 5 years

Louise Demers—Loulou—is a highly esteemed educator whose students love to be around her and thrive in her presence. As passionate and dedicated today as she was when she began her career 35 years ago, Loulou has an ability to listen and to lead that inspires everyone—her colleagues, parents and children—to actively participate and to live in harmony.

Philosophy of care

The interventions and activities Loulou proposes are always motivated by the developmental needs of the children—emotional, motor, social, cognitive and language. Her incredible creativity motivates children to get out of their comfort zones and use their imagination to develop in their own unique way.

Support of child development

  • Places considerable importance on taking care of others and helping children assert themselves by expressing their emotions; she helps children articulate their frustrations and sadness, and gets them to think about how their actions affect others as a means of resolving conflict
  • Excels at managing risk in her activities; this allows children to develop their motor skills by pushing themselves to the limit
  • Assigns each child a task in the classroom so they can learn to contribute to the group's betterment, and encourages parents to implement these small responsibilities at home
  • Names a "friend for the day" every morning; this child is assigned special tasks and receives a few privileges, in order to give them a sense of importance
  • Led a garden project so the children could learn how to work with the soil and grow vegetables

Involvement with parents, families and the community

  • Focuses on the important synergy that arises from the parent-educator-child triad in order to create a winning team that fosters the child's optimal development
  • Adapts her approaches, when possible, to those used in the home so children can have the same benchmarks in both environments
  • Uses the EVEIL (Ensemble contre l'intimidation et la violence à Lévis) anti-bullying program with the children so everyone can speak the same language when working to resolve conflict

Rave reviews

"She sees young children for who they are and uses all of her knowledge to foster their development."

Parent