AUSSIE

Blog entry posted November 19th, 2009 by Lisa Burman

What a turn out for the inaugural meeting of the AUSSIE Pre-K Interest Group! Eighteen AUSSIE consultants met on the evening of Thursday, November 5th and though our backgrounds and experiences are diverse, we were connected by our shared belief in the capacity of all children to learn, and our commitment to creating learning environments where young children are excited about learning.  We shared our backgrounds and our interest in pre-school/early childhood education, which sparked rich conversation about the importance of exploration, freedom, play, oral language development and the opportunity for children to learn within a social context. 

This first meeting was held at PS 347 The American Sign Language and English Lower School, which has a long relationship working with AUSSIE. Dave Bowell, Assistant Principal, offered a warm welcome and inspired us with a vision of creating learning places where young children are curious, can play, interact with each other, have rich conversations, draw and create. 

The group had the opportunity to visit the six Pre-K classes at PS 347, which had left “traces of learning” to help us imagine the learning that took place in each room during the day. Feedback from consultants included:

“My foremost impression from our classroom visits is that these children are held in high esteem and deemed competent by the adults who work for and with them. The art work, each one different, and unique emerges in an atmosphere of trust where creativity and risk taking are the core of learning.”

“The feeling in each of them is of being a place where I would be happy to spend my day. It wasn't difficult to imagine you all there getting so involved with building and constructing, reading, playing and all the other interesting places to explore. The visit has inspired and reinvigorated me to advocate for children being engaged in their learning and for such high quality relationships between children and adults.”

“It was so refreshing to visit classrooms that enact the true essence of early childhood education. Congratulations to all!”

Stay tuned for the details from our next Pre-K Interest Group meeting slated to be held sometime early in December. The group decided to use the “Reflect, Respect, Relate” resource from South Australia (which AUSSIE’s own Penny Cook was part of writing), to focus our conversations on dispositions for learning and active learning environments.  We hope this interest group grows to include more AUSSIE Consultants in various content areas, Math, Literacy, Science, Technology…and anyone with a genuine interest in pre-school learning.  Be sure to leave your comments on Early Childhood Education below and for further information about joining our interest group please contact me, Lisa Burman, through the Contacts Page with the subject line "Pre-K".