Current Assignment in the College of Education and Human Sciences:
Lecturer
Ruth Staples Child Development Lab
Child Development/Early Childhood Education
FACS 497A, Practicum in Child Development
Philosophy Statement: I am a social constructivist who seeks to create communities of learners amongst children, college students, myself, and families. Developing and maintaining reciprocal relationships of trust amongst teachers and learners is key to the success of our learning community. I believe in using an inquiry based approach to learning developed through the use of documentation. Documentation may take many forms such as: raw documentation including quick notes of moments with children, photographs, artifacts of children's work and dialogue amongst children and teachers; portfolio pages; finished display boards of project work; family memory books of project work; and on-going written communication between teachers and families. As a teacher educator, documentation is a valuable resource for teacher education. It is a visual representation of a child's learning and teacher's understanding of the learning. Having concrete pieces of evidence of children's learning in this way enables one to reflect alone or with others around multiple aspects of teaching and learning.
