My Education

This was previously the information page for our preschool The Great Green Room. We have since established a website you can find at thegreatgreenroom.org.

I have decided to use this blog as a forum to share information, thoughts, articles, experiences, observations and maybe some other things if I think of them.

First I'd like to share little bit about me and what brought me to this place. I have worked with children in various settings for the past 20 years and I have been running the preschool/daycare I founded for the past 5 years or so. In 2007 my brother and sister-in-law were looking for childcare for my nephew and they found it underwhelming and depressing. They saw kids sprawled in front of the TV all day, bad food, few activities. Their difficult journey was the seed of thought for what is now The Great Green Room. I had just returned from my Master's program in London where I'd recently completed my Master's dissertation entitled "Who decides what kids eat? The influence of transnational corporations in children's diets." My work on this topic fueled my passion for being mindful of what we feed children. The "American diet" is placing an unsustainable strain on individual and environmental health. I knew that as a caretaker, I would have the opportunity to create a healthier and more sustainable approach to food for our kids. I loved working with kids as a camp counselor and environmental educator. I developed a passion for early child education through my own education journey, my time as a nanny and then as a preschool teacher. Opening up the daycare in 2009 gave me the opportunity to combine these passions and meet a need doing what I love. In 2011 we transitioned from a daycare to a preschool.

This blog isn't going to be about me personally, but it is from my perspective and and will reflect my interests. I'm sharing my education journey so you have a better understanding of where I am coming from (and you can choose to take my thoughts with whatever size salt grain you'd like). I had never been "a good student." I learned early on that I wasn't good at traditional education, which, in my 5th grade mind translated as "I'm not very smart." I always did fine in school. My mom would spend endless hours helping me with homework, I had many teachers who genuinely cared about me. Upon reflection I now know that my smarts came in forms other than academic achievement. I was smart enough to get through without letting the fact that school rarely made sense to me get me down. Socializing. I was good at socializing. From preschool through my undergrad years socializing was where I excelled. It wasn't until I graduated from Western Washington University and took a job as an environmental educator at Camp Orkila that I realized I was confusing being "smart" with being curious. What I learned in school was that I wasn't smart, and that took the curiosity right out of me. As an environmental educator I actually wanted to learn more about what I was teaching. I wanted to read about environmental science. And when I read these environmentally science-y books, I understood them, because I cared. I liked learning* for one of the first times I could remember (*our society's narrow definition of "learning"). What was the difference? I was outside, moving, touching, smelling, talking. It was hands-on and experiential. I lost my curiosity in school. I found it when I went outside and connected with a different way of learning that spoke to me. I don't mean to bash traditional education. It is great for a great many things, but meeting the learning styles of all students is not one of them. I reclaimed my love of learning (we're all born with it!) and went on to earn an M.A. in Communities, Organizations and Social Change at City University, London. I loved my Master's program. I loved learning again. Through this all, I gained a passion for experiential education.

Preschool is the perfect setting for experiential education. There is freedom and variety in early childhood education that is so much harder to find once a child reaches kindergarten. Do you want structure, academics, play, Waldorf, Montessori, Reggio Emilio, no philosophy at all or a mixture of philosophies (as The Great Green Room is)? You can find all those in early childhood education. There are so many things I love about my job and working in an educational environment with young children, but the fact that we can respect each child as an individual and trust that they will reveal to us what they are ready to learn and how they will best learn it, is my favorite part.

DISCLAIMER: I do not have any children of my own. This brings pluses and minuses with it. On the minus side: I cannot relate to that deep emotional connection with a child that only a parent can have. I don't have that primal need to protect my child. On the plus side: I can step back, offer some perspective and offer the experience of working with many kids. I hope I share thoughts and articles of interest... or at least conversations starters!