Educational Philosophy
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“Together we are able to create a uniquely improvisational approach to team-teaching; one that employs individual strengths while supporting the innate differences in our abilities. And to this day that is the strength behind both the beauty and the success at Corner of the Sky. We support in each other the freedom to truly ‘follow the child.’ We are not entrapped in a schedule, or an imposed curriculum that inhibits the creativity of the children or ourselves. We have designed an environment that truly embodies the belief in child-centered learning.”
—Valerie Akers, founder and teacher at Corner of the Sky (2002-present) and creator of Holding up the Sky a different approach to engaging with young children. |
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Though we have a framework from which we plan our curriculum, we are always open to the current interests of the children, as individuals or within the group as a whole. Through the tenets of emergent curriculum, the children modify our learning plan by their choices during play. In this way, the children help to choose the year’s curriculum by cultivating more meaningful and self-directed learning. For example, one day a group of children were playing inside, and one pretended that she was lost. Another suggested we make a map to find her and our study of maps began! We decorated the walls with homemade maps, boating maps, city maps and even bus maps. This led us to “build” a cardboard bus in the classroom, and culminated with a round-trip bus ride as a field trip.
This particular theme has never been revisited, yet our dedication to emergent curriculum continues to thrive, as the partnership between children and teachers molds us as a learning community. |
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