Best Practices in Early Childhood Education

Early childhood is an extraordinary time in human development. Young children learn at such an accelerated pace, often surprising the adults in the room. We marvel at their endless energy, curious ways, and delightful questions. It is in this time and space that parents and educators lay the foundation for lifelong learning. It goes without saying, early learning environments for which we place our children are critical to desired outcomes.

This substack is dedicated to following the very best practices in early childhood education. It is a celebration of the very best schools and innovative teachers. The ones who got it right. How do I know they got it right? Because their work lives on, continuing to transform learning communities of parents and educators, and the lives of children. They got it right because their schools are still thriving decades later.

We can pay attention to what has failed in education or we can pay attention to schools where children thrive. As with all things human, what we pay attention to, we get more of.

We begin this substack with the early childhood schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. It was Howard Gardener and Harvard’s Project Zero that recognized and held a spotlight upon the extraordinary outcomes of the schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy.

“As an American educator, I cannot help but be struck by certain paradoxes. In America we pride ourselves on being focused on children, and yet we do not pay sufficient attention to what they are actually expressing.

• We call for cooperative learning among children, and yet we rarely have sustained cooperation at the level of teacher and administrator.

• We call for artistic works, but we rarely fashion environments that can truly support and inspire them.

• We call for parental involvement, but are loathe to share ownership, responsibility, and credit with parents.

• We recognize the need for community, but we so often crystallize immediately into interest groups.

• We hail the discovery method, but we do not have the confidence to allow children to follow their own noses and hunches.

• We call for debate, but often spurn it; we call for listening, but we prefer to talk; we are affluent, but we do not safeguard those resources that can allow us to remain so and to foster the affluence of others.

Reggio is so instructive in these respects. Where we are often intent to invoke slogans, the educators in Reggio work tirelessly to solve many of these fundamental—and fundamentally difficult—issues.”

The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach - Advanced Reflections (1998)