Philosophy

I entered early childhood education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, I was teaching in a school where the priorities were academic performance and student compliance--even on Zoom. As the seven-year-olds in my class wriggled or slumped in front of their Chromebooks, I saw their need for physical movement, play, and real-world experiences. It didn’t sit right with me. I jumped at the chance to start working in person in a Waldorf early childhood classroom. 

In some ways, it was like I had landed on another planet. Helping children with eating, sleeping, and toileting was new. I was also surprised at how much value was placed upon imaginative play and meaningful work. However, the routines and environment were also strangely familiar. Early childhood work awakened memories of my earliest years: of the tender, patient care of my grandparents, who helped look after me from the day I was born until I entered school (and beyond). 

My nainai, yeye, laolao, and laoye, survivors of political turmoil and economic hardship in 1930s - 1980s China, taught me my earliest life lessons: the rewards of growing, gathering, and cooking food; how to work hard and how to take a rest; how to make the things you need; how to care for others, and how to be cared for. They nourished my lifelong love of reading–one grandmother through her vivid storytelling; the other through her handmade flashcards. 

Without knowing it, I also absorbed their ways of speaking up and keeping silent, their values around food and family, their optimism, and their persistence. As I cared for children the same way my grandparents had cared for me, I realized how deeply my early experiences and relationships with my grandparents had shaped me. Their care made me who I am. That’s when I realized early education and care was my life's work.

After that realization, I worked with increasingly younger ages, learning about development, curricula, and environments for preschoolers, then toddlers, and then infants. I observed the similarities and differences between the Waldorf and Reggio settings I worked in and continued refining my own educational philosophy. I learned from the best--colleagues and comrades at The Hartsbrook School, Hampshire College Early Learning Center, Sow Well Tots, and New Village Preschool.

I also realized that the dominant view of “best practice” in early education and care excluded the traditional child-rearing practices my grandparents had used to raise me. Our family’s cultural system included observable practices like spoon feeding and elimination communication, as well as less obvious differences like the role of nonverbal communication and adult-centered environments. This realization influenced how I partner with families. 

Rather than seeing differences as “wrong,” I value and am curious about each family’s way of doing things. Educators, families, and children all benefit from learning different cultural practices. It equips us to navigate different environments, to connect with more people, and to love and celebrate everyone’s cultural background, including our own.

My mission is to create a program that embraces conversations about differences in child rearing, that provides high quality child care in a nurturing, homey environment, that supports children and families during critical years of growth and development, that is sustainable for educators, and that advocates for the importance of early childhood experiences. I’m excited to move forward as an educator who honors my grandparents in my daily work with children.