By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. When I was an early childhood education student, writing objective observations for course assignments was not a task I remember fondly. When I was an ECE professor, most of my students detested the observation assignments that required an adherence towards objectivity. They needed to be purposefully detached from their feelings, … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. Questions can be a wonderful way of supporting children’s thinking, theories, and emerging interests. On the other hand, they can be used to test children’s memory and can end up stifling their language development. Open-ended questions are developmentally more appropriate than closed-ended and testing questions. Open-ended questions are questions that … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. and Rosalba Bortolotti, RECE. Our last post introduced our perspectives on the Studio Approach to Early Learning influenced by the ‘ateliers’ in the infant-toddler and preschools of Reggio Emilia. In North America the term studio refers to what is known as the atelier in Italy. “It is at once an … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. Close your eyes and visualize a coach … what image did you bring to your mind? Now do it again and see YOU! We often hear about images in early learning. An image describes a picture in the mind. If the picture you conjured up was that of a sports … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. It was almost a year ago, May 2020, when I facilitated my first webinar for early childhood educators on Zoom. At that time, it was hard to imagine that almost a year later we would still be faced with the challenges of COVID, and I would have subsequently delivered over … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. The York Region Nature Collaborative has been offering a series of Land as Teacher webinars. On February 13th, I had the honour of co-presenting Land as Teacher: Foundations for Early Learning, the fifth offering in the series. Rather than a presentation, it was a dialogue about contexts and perspectives between … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. Stories spiral in and out of my mind when I visit the pond near my house. These stories are woven together by threads of relationships. There are stories within stories that relate to my professional and personal growth in my final season. The pond is the backdrop to a documented … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. When I started this series focused on the six pedagogical approaches of How Does Learning Happen? Ontario’s Pedagogy for the Early Years (2014) it was my way of giving back to early childhood educators who were looking for professional learning opportunities during quarantine especially those in my home province of Ontario, … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. As many early childhood educators in Ontario are considering their return to programs across the province, we, as a profession, are at a crossroad. To be at a crossroad is to be at a point where you have to make very important decisions. Will you go bravely into this new world of child … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. I have always believed that early childhood educators are the salt of the earth, a phrase that refers to groups of people who have great worth to society. In my long career as a proud early childhood educator, never has this been more apparent to me than during this unprecedented … Continue reading
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