President's Blog: From the Heart

By Eric F. Spina

Holding up a clear plastic umbrella in a Bombeck Family Learning Center classroom, Ian Adams ‘17 asked a class of aspiring teachers, “How cool is it to watch the water droplets run off this?”

This is not a casual musing from Adams, the center’s curriculum specialist and a former teacher. He’s prompting UD early childhood education majors to think about creating lessons in hydrology for 3- to 5-year-olds.

From the moment I walked in the door of the Bombeck Center the other week to visit classes, I realized this is quite a special place. “Learning” is prominently part of the center’s name because the Bombeck Center is an early childhood education demonstration school and a lauded model, marked by its innovative curriculum, impressive awards, and lengthy waitlist. Its history is long and distinguished, and its true impact is nearly immeasurable.

The Center’s 110 students benefit from individualized attention from a literal village of educators. Many of the center’s teachers are adjunct professors in the School of Education and Health Sciences. They teach both our tiniest of Flyers and instruct and mentor more than 60 practicum students each semester who are learning best practices in early childhood education — and inspiring a love of learning in tykes before they even master tying their shoes.

“We’re not training you to be teachers. We’re training you to be leaders,” Shauna Adams, the center’s executive director, told a classroom full of students during my visit.

Dr. Adams is one of the fiercest advocates in the nation for improving the quality of early childhood education, and I commend the center’s distinctive STEM curriculum and its focus on engaged learning. The preschoolers don’t spend much time talking about dinosaurs, as fascinating as they are, because these extinct creatures are not part of their daily lives. Instead, one class learned about photography and created an original book, The Adventures of Banana the Shark. Another could name the major food groups and made popcorn as they learned about the science of cooking.

Molly Potter ‘25, an early childhood education major from Louisville, Kentucky, helped children learn about wind. “I brought in pinwheels. The students ran, spun in circles, stood in different areas of the garden, and fully explored how to make the pinwheel move as well as what else the wind moved while we were outside,” said Molly, who hopes to teach first or second grade after graduation. “The children were able to explore a science topic that is relevant to their daily lives.”

As part of Amy Kronberg’s EDT 313 course, students attend lectures, make clinical rounds, and develop an array of age-appropriate STEM learning experiences for the children. These future classroom teachers will graduate with a STEM teaching certificate and more than twice as much classroom experience as required by the state of Ohio, but they’re entering a profession that’s under stress from a national teaching shortage and burnout. In a lesson on advocacy, Dr. Kronberg urged the students to “be a voice” for their students and themselves: “You will be on the frontline of what happens in the classroom.”

I’m convinced this new generation of UD-educated frontline teachers will change young lives, one child at a time.

It’s already happening at the Bombeck Center.

(Photo courtesy of the Bombeck Family Learning Center)