Carly Seidler and JoAnn Ford-Halvorsen

Early Childhood Center, Aptakisic-Tripp
Community Consolidated School District 102 Illinois

JoAnn Ford-Halvorsen and Carly Seidler captured our attention as we worked on innovation mindsets and learner-centric strategies with their K-8 district, west of Lake Michigan and north of Chicago. This is both suburban and rural and is part of the area which feeds into the famed Stevenson High School.  One grew up in Iowa, the other has lived her whole life in the area. One wanted to be an architect, the other felt pulled to education almost from the start. They are from two different generations, and had really only known each other a short time. But both talked intensely about those who had mentored them, and both shared their commitment to their current work in the Aptakisic-Tripp Early Childhood Center. The center is a place where young children, often with the kind of significant needs that can seem invisible in American suburbs, are allowed to grow at their own pace, and in their own way. 

These two women are dedicated to facilitating a process of building out progressive learning support for young children in the Center, and in doing so, they are bringing a team of educators with them to wrap a constructivist, child-centered curriculum grounded in the Reggio Emilia philosophy into the work of the Center.

The Setting

Somewhere equidistant to Chicago to the south and the Wisconsin border to the north, west of Lake Michigan and west of the Chicagoland’s famed ring of Forest Preserves, is Buffalo Grove and the area that makes up the Aptakisic-Tripp public school district.

The area is, by any standards, wealthy (or at least “upper middle class”), white (with a significant Asian presence), and deeply suburban. Malls and shopping supercenters line the border of the Forest Preserve, historic neighborhoods mingle with subdivisions, an area that had just a few thousand people in 1960 now has between 50,000 and 60,000.

An elementary principal we worked with in Virginia who had just moved from being an Assistant Principal at an “at-risk” school to his new job leading a school with a wealthy, suburban population, once said that, “In an at-risk school every teacher knows that they need to work with the most vulnerable kids because, if nothing else, they need those kids to be able to pass [state tests]. But in a place like this, those test results will always be fine, so the kids who really need help can get ignored.” 

When we sat down with Carly and JoAnn, we soon knew we were in the presence of two early childhood educators determined to not let young children, children with developmental needs, become invisible on their watch.

Social Justice even in ‘great schools’

It’s easy to have great schools that do not serve all children with equity. A system of equity builds intentional inclusivity, a value for differences, and cultural regard for relationships. A system of equity provides the learning resources and experiences that different children need from preschool to high school. When we walked into the Early Childhood Center, we knew that the community of Aptakisic-Tripp puts resources behind an “all means all” philosophy. In making this philosophy clear, the district vision does not mince words:  

“Every day, every student will come to school and be met with learning opportunities at his or her personal developmental level in all subject areas. He or she will leave school having been challenged, feeling successful, and looking forward to tomorrow.” 

In the event that anyone missed the point this statement on their website follows:

“Our Learning Vision is very powerful. There is no ambiguity, no room for equivocation. It doesn’t say “most days, most students” or “every day, some students.” Living up to our vision is a tall order, and something we take very seriously.”

Connected Community

Entering the Early Childhood Center immediately places visitors into a buzz of children in an open space area for children’s physical and motor development. We stood on the sidelines while children sped in front of us on tricycles in a rainbow of colors. As we walked around, we were struck by the presence of natural lighting, child-centered architectural elements, and the use of wood and color throughout the space. But, it was the children at work that led us to see how the center functioned as a connected community - across spaces, indoors and outdoors, and among staff and children. 

Carly and JoAnn begin to talk about the value of the Center and how they came to find each other, two educators who believe that all children, children with IEPs too, can learn to exercise making choices and to develop interdependence with others as well as independence in their work and play. They are so on point with each other that each sentence is a blend of their words and each pause is an opportunity for the other to connect philosophy to the stories of children in their care. Their connection might not have been predicted from their background experiences except they both are observers who have noticed inequities for a long time. For Carly that noticing occurred early in the most traditional of schooling experiences when she first saw how differently the experiences of children can be when school staff work from a deficit philosophy. JoAnn pursued other academic pathways until she connected in a college class with stories of young people with a continuum of disabilities.  As a young educator, she worked in some of the most challenging public schools in Chicago - an educational “baptism by fire” in her own words. 

In the Medici Effect author Frans Johannson researched factors that influence collaborative creativity and innovation. He found that when teams bring diverse experiences, cultures, and knowledge together, the environment in which they work becomes a metaphorical petri dish in which the very diversity of team members grows innovation through the intersection of ideas across disciplines and background experiences.  Carly and JoAnn represent a version of the Medici Effect in their teamwork to shape the philosophy and actions of educational teams in the Early Childhood Center. 

“I went to a Catholic school within the area,” Carly Seidler says, “and I was that kid who was a really good student and so I was pulled to go to the gifted resource room and while other kids were getting pulled to go to a different room for help and it always stuck out to me and it always bothered me.”

“I finally found my calling when I had a professor who was a school psychologist and he told stories,” JoAnn Ford-Halvorsen told us, “and the stories involved students with significant needs. But the piece that I identified with were the problems and helping [get] around that. and so that's been the piece for my educational career.”

Making it real

The Reggio Emilia model is renowned as a mecca for early childhood educators seeking to understand how to create environments where the innate developmental stages through which young children grow intersects with opportunities that support children to build and extend competencies as they construct understanding of concepts and knowledge. In the Reggio Emilia school model that originated from pedagogist Loris Malaguzzi, parents and educators working together in Reggio Emilia, a city in northern Italy. In a Reggio school, educators support children to use what is labeled “a hundred languages” as they take some control over the direction of their own learning, engage in experiential learning choices, build relationships as they work and play with materials and other children, and express themselves through the arts, language, movement and other forms of expression. What differentiates the Reggio model from other more standardized, structured early childhood models is the degree of trust in children, the stepping back of teachers when children make mistakes and an open approach to learning through projects without directed outcomes set by adults. Imagine what learning looks like in a Reggio school. Now imagine seeing concepts from that model being implemented in an Early Childhood Center for children with special needs. 

That’s what we saw when we walked through the doors and Carly and JoAnn met us at the Aptakisic-Tripp Early Childhood Center. Carly had been drawn to teaching from a child development class she took when in high school. She pursued teaching as a student at the University of Wisconsin and describes a mentorship with professor Robin Fox there as opening her eyes to educational possibilities she had never considered. She ended up teaching in a special education self-contained classroom and found herself “losing steam” after just a  few years. Because of school program restraints she couldn’t realize the kind of learning she knew would make a difference for the children she served.  At that point, Carly took one of those leaps of faith, moved home with her parents, and saved enough money to pursue an opportunity to learn the Reggio Emilia model in the Reggio professional development program in Italy. She knew applying to the program and being accepted was a long shot but she took the risk and found herself in a few months in Italy, one of a hundred international educators selected. 

“I had an opportunity to go Reggio Emilia which is the hub project-based learning with early childhood. It was a big piece of my heart in college and somewhere I thought I'd always wanted to go but I didn't know if there would be an opportunity for me to do it. Their teachings and their studies hit home with me. An opportunity came up to go there and spend a few weeks there and learn from the experts themselves.  I was one of 100 teachers in the group around the world to talk and to hear how teachers in Israel do  things versus teachers in the US versus a teacher in Australia and it was such an eye-opening experience … (it) shifted my mindset with everything.” 

“A big thing this year with the kids is taking more ownership over things. We had talked about [what were] realistic jobs within the classroom and how the kids could carry those out and understand the deeper meaning of what they're doing. For example we put into place a “meteorologist in the classroom” so it's more than just reporting what the weather is, like you'd see at a typical circle time, it was decisions behind what's the weather and can we go outside and play today why or why not.”

Bringing Reggio into the Early Childhood Center 

Few early childhood educators in the U.S. are well-versed in the philosophy and learning strategies of the Reggio Emilia model. In fact, as the U.S. public education system came to reflect the structures imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the early childhood programs in the United States came to reflect the standardization shifts occurring in elementary school grade levels. This pushed a model of early childhood learning among our  youngest children towards acquisition of skills essential to passing math and literacy tests and an increased use of pre-, formative, and post-assessments pushed the accountability movement into early childhood classrooms. The Early Childhood Center in Aptakisic-Tripp D102 is an exception. 

JoAnn’s leadership is key to that work. She spends a lot of time in classrooms watching children at work and she notices the changes that are happening as teachers become more comfortable with the concepts of the Reggio model. The shifts make sense to her because children who have opportunity to make choices, work and play collaboratively, and become self-directed in their learning grow critical cognitive, social-emotional, and psycho-motor competencies when those opportunities underpin curriculum.  

“When I walk into classrooms during whole group time there still may be three different things going on at the same time because the weather person has their clipboard and today's the day they go and look out the window. Then at the end of that circle time they report out what the weather is and answer questions--and make decisions about outdoor activities. Someone else may be counting the tallies from the question of the day when students walked in and all while the teacher still has things going on with the group.” 

JoAnn’s  natural observations of how children experience learning are important to teachers like Carly. Afterall, teaching is an incredibly isolating profession and interactions  about learners and learning among educators in disparate roles in a school really levels the professional hierarchy. Administrators such as JoAnn learn from teachers such as Carly and vice versa. It’s almost a version of the Reggio model at the professional learning level. 

 Carly is a master teacher in the early childhood classroom but she doesn’t always get to notice how her classroom runs. JoAnn sees her role as a questioner who takes the time to listen to children, to staff, and to parents to find out how she can support children to make remarkable strides in their growth. When she and Carly chat they move quickly into reflection upon what they learn from each other as they process together. 

 “... it's amazing they're only three-four years old but you know it just seems the norm until you take a step back and use another lens to take a look. There are people that think high schools, universities and adults should live learning more like early childhood kids. Damn yeah! If I engaged the way that a four-year-old does in everything --even just walking across the room-- how rich my life would be - and how much more fit I would be, too. I never want my students to lose their sense of wonder and curiosity and I don't want their school experiences that come after they leave my classroom to ever get crushed. When I see them in my classroom, their ideas and their minds working and how excited they are, it's beautiful. And, it's incredible to watch and I never ever want them to lose that.” 

 Carly and JoAnn give hope that the learning sparks they are creating in the Early Childhood Center can ignite that same spark in others to find value in a constructivist approach to the learning of young children.