At Mother Duck, we pride ourselves on our innovative learning curriculum, thoughtfully curated indoor and outdoor environments and intentional selection of age-appropriate, open-ended, and engaging resources and equipment.

We hold a strong focus on the health and welfare of every child, and devote considerable time to researching ways to safely minimise risks to ensure children are offered worthwhile challenges in their learning whilst remaining safe and protected in our care.  

To achieve all of this, it takes a combination of exceptionally knowledgeable and inspiring service leaders, a community of professionals and supporting consultants, and an enormous village of dedicated educators working at ground zero to deliver the highest quality of support, education and care to each of our attending children and families.

As with all successful working environments, great teams are led by great leaders, and each of our service owners has been handpicked after years of experience working within the Mother Duck organisation. Each is a qualified early childhood professional, working mother and a committed businesswoman well equipped to lead their service.

Today,  just like in 1990 when the first Mother Duck opened its doors, our Mother Duck operators expend valuable time and effort in the selection, securing and induction of educators. The Queensland Government, Department of Education, Early Childhood Education and Care advises that qualities of great early childhood educators include –

• Being a good communicator
• Being passionate, authentic and loving learning
• Resecting children and families
• Being creative and energetic
• Being organised, and
• Holding a qualification that gives you the formal knowledge and skills you need

Our families deserve the best care possible for their children so at Mother Duck we choose all those traits and more. We look for warmhearted and passionate educators who are committed to collectively bettering outcomes for children.

ACECQA research shows that children are much more likely to reach their full potential when their family and service work together to exchange information regularly and collaborate on consistent approaches to daily routines, child development and learning. So accordingly, we prioritise engaging people who hold effective communication skills, the ability to establish trusting partnerships with children and families, and who participate in ongoing professional learning.

Onboarding our new educators looks different at Mother Duck because we slow down the induction process and ensure educators are provided the time necessary to get to know the children, familiarise with the rituals of the day and the operation of the studio environments.

Our inductions intentionally commit to each educator not just meeting but exceeding the legislative requirement for First Aid, CPR, Asthma and Anaphylaxis training, ensures each educator becomes well informed about our Mother Duck operational guidelines, policies and procedures, and regularly schedule for educators to complete all child protection, safe sleeping, risk assessment training and workplace health and safety certificates necessary.

Our educators are intentionally supported to become acquainted with the curriculum pedagogy, Mother Duck ‘ways’, assisted by Studio Leads and each service’s Pedagogical Coordinator to observe children’s learning and development requirements and then curate environments that complement each child’s needs and directions for learning.

 You will observe at Mother Duck that our educators use a ‘whole-hearted’ approach to excellence in care which is reflected in our shared core values including –

• Environments being carefully created for children
• A focus on care and attention for each individual child, and
• A play-based learning approach to prepare each child for success

Starting from families strong first interactions during ‘stay and plays’ through to enrolment and beyond, our workforce of high-quality educators works tirelessly to deliver excellence in early childhood education and care. By upholding the rights of all children, recognising families as children’s most important social and cultural community, and collectively and collaboratively responding to the best interests of children.

Every day we feel proud of the educators who make Mother Duck such a strong organisation, we feel fortunate for the wonderfully varied skills that each person brings to their role, and we appreciate their dedication to the early childhood industry as we move forward into 2024 better able to deliver exceptional high-quality education and care to all children because of our educators.

Thank you to our service owners, leadership teams and a HUGE thank you to our Mother Duck educators – you make our delivery of education and care work with children Exceptional!