A dedicated group of Early Childhood Educators (ECE) aptly presented their work with children and families at the December 2022 Southern Arizona Association for the Education of Young Children Annual (SAzAEYC) Conference, Returning to Play Connecting the Child within you to the Children we Serve, held at the College of Education, University of Arizona. The unexpected rain did not dampen their spirits or their presentations.
Sena Ceklic and Marjorie Ruiz, both members of the Paradise Valley Community College family, co-presented the workshop Documenting and Studying Children’s Meaning through Play As educators, we have an obligation to document children’s play, make meaning of pedagogical documentation and unlock its potential by making it a daily habit of our work, which included documentation from Ruiz’s internship inquiry-based education project.
Ceklic is an ECE and Child and Family Studies Adjunct Faculty at PVCC, as well as a kindergarten teacher at Quail Run Elementary School following the International Baccalaureate Programme; while Ruiz is a PVCC ECE graduate and an Early Childhood Educator in the Deer Valley Unified School District.
“This was the first SAzAEYC in-person conference after four years of conferencing online.
Energy and excitement among attending educators from all over our state was incredible,” said Ceklic. “They came with a desire to reimagine what our early childhood education world could be post COVID, and we were determined to make our best teaching and learning practices visible to them. I appreciated the support of my PVCC mentors, Christie Colunga and Ana Stigsson, as well as other colleagues who came along on this journey. I am honored and privileged to be a part of such a supportive, diverse, and robust family of educators.”
Dulce Shimkus, a PVCC ECE graduate, Early Childhood Educator at Pinnacle Presbyterian Preschool, and member of PVCC’s Leading Learning Council and Collaborative Educators Institute, presented Bilingual | Bilingüe The Badas and Booms Project: The Rhythm of our Life/El ritmo de nuestra vida. The presentation offered participants the opportunity to follow the journey of young children’s musical encounters and discover how a group of preschool children re-imagined the world of music and constructed their own musical system of communication, a system representing the rhythm of their life. PVCC ECE graduate and adjunct faculty, Jennifer Hicks, supported Shimkus throughout her presentation.
“I would like to express my gratitude for the opportunity to present my "Badas and Booms" project with fellow early childhood educators at the SAzAEYC conference,” said Shimkus. “This was an almost year-long project that encompassed every area of the classroom in playful ways. The children were proud to share their learning with their families and other children in the school, as was I to share with you all. The application process, as well as the wait to hear if my project was selected, was exciting!”
PVCC is proud of these devoted educators for not only doing the important work of educating young children in some of the best and most desirable ways, but also for making this work visible to other educators in our state.