Monday was well spent at YANJ’s headquarters near Princeton, NJ. These are training sessions in early childhood education. The morning session featured Ed Greene (www.pyramidprinciples,com) who’s been doing this for a long time. Great info on the spectrum of learning abilities from 2-yr. olds through 5-yr olds. We also got to hear from two ladies who run a Pre-K center in Newark – boots on the ground, as they say.
The afternoon session was play time for the artists – Miss Tree, a wood-sculptor and teaching artist. She modeled her five-day residency, working with the kids and, importantly, the teachers. Very similar to the PASELA experience I participated in last year. All kinds of wood: blocks, twigs, bark, tree limbs, knobs, etc. The best thing to come out of the session was mixing it up with the other artists. A nice community, indeed. Oh, and they fed us!