12:30pm - 2:00pm CST / 1:30pm - 3:00pm EST | February 11, 2021

Centering Connection in Early Childhood (Remote) Curriculums

As winter continues, the possibility of remote teaching being some part of our future still looms large. Young children need to feel connected in order to learn. Remote teaching is a new and particular challenge for early childhood educators. This workshop looks at teaching and learning through the lens of connections. If students are connected to each other, their teachers, their families, and the world around them, they can remain engaged in learning.

This year, even as we have returned to in-person teaching, making connections has remained a challenge. As families are limited in their ability to visit the classroom and engage in the daily ritual of conversation with teachers at pickup and dropoff, we must find creative solutions to help families feel connected to their children’s school community. One of the challenges for remote learning is the diverse home environments that children experience. Creating opportunities for meaningful sharing of work and ideas can help to alleviate these differences and help children and families to feel they are still part of a classroom community. These same strategies can be used to create virtual parent involvement as well. Using curriculum to nurture connections and using connection as a driving force for curriculum creates a cycle of learning that softens the barriers to growth and engagement inherent in remote learning. Affirming children’s experiences can help them to make sense of the changes to their world.

Participants will investigate what it means to center connection, not content, in (remote) early childhood teaching. How does this change how content is taught? Along with sharing some successful practices and curriculum used as part of the Greenhouse Connections program and in one pre-k classroom, this workshop will also provide space to apply these ideas in the context of your own classroom. 

Meet Our Speaker:

David Vining is Head Teacher at Columbia Greenhouse in the 4-5’s classroom. He has taught at Greenhouse for eight years, all with the 4-5’s. David is also a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Early Childhood program of the Curriculum and Teaching department. His research interests are school readiness discourses, the transition to kindergarten, engaging children as educational researchers, and incorporating children’s voices in teacher education. David holds an MSEd in Museum Education-Childhood Education from Bank Street College. His teaching practices are influenced by Reggio Emilia, antiracist impulses, and project based curriculums. David is also the father of two fourth graders and was navigating four different remote learning platforms within his household from March to June 2020.

Cost: $45 for TAIS Members, $75 for Guests 

REGISTER HERE

 A Collaborative Event