The Clever Conversation Co.

Hi, I’m Sonya.

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I’m the founder of The Clever Conversation Co. and I’m deeply passionate about the role coaching, mentoring and collaborative inquiry conversations can play in strengthening practice across the Early Childhood Education and Care sector.

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Over the past 20 years, I have worked across the education sector providing coaching and mentoring training programs that build leaders’ capability to lead the growth and development of educators. I have worked with schools through the system wide implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) approaches to schooling where collaborative teaching teams use student data as the basis of practice -focused inquiry.

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As a Cognitive Coaching® Training Associate, I spent over 14 years working with education leaders across Australia, while also contributing to research exploring coach identity in education.

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More recently, I’ve worked closely with early childhood leaders, through the Victorian Department of Education’s Coach and Mentor Training Program.

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At the heart of my work is a simple belief: when leaders are equipped to have meaningful, reflective, growth and development focused conversations, they create the conditions for continuous learning, stronger relationships, and lasting improvement in practice.

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Through The Clever Conversation Co., I combine expertise, with contemporary research and a deep commitment to the ECEC sector to support leaders to embed practice-focused conversations into everyday interactions - creating cultures of growth, reflection, and continuous learning.

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​Because ultimately, it’s through the everyday conversations we have that meaningful change happens - for educators, for teams, and for children.

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