For Alyssa Smith, the pandemic enabled her to view her courses on play and curriculum as a big “look into the mirror” to discern what matters and what was important about becoming a teacher.

This collection of Voices focuses on what we all have been learning about ourselves and our work over the past year and a half of overlapping crises in our nation and the world.

A group of coaches, teacher educators, and program directors in Massachusetts spends a school year investigating the ways a cross-context inquiry group can support early childhood leaders in their work with early childhood educators.

In his teacher research, Ron Grady investigates how play can support and scaffold a favorite domain of so many early childhood professionals—language and literacy.

Through inquiry, teachers and young children can create authentic, organic learning that informs their understanding of themselves, of others, and of the world they live in.

The most powerful learning I have gleaned from my work with the project approach is that when children learn to inquire, they are learning how to learn. They are empowered to ask questions and seek answers.

The more important truth is that it does not matter what we label Vivian Paley in the end if our goal is authenticity. It only matters that we disseminate her work to the next generation of early childhood teachers, so that they, too, may tame the classro

Vivian Paley’s contribution to the field of early childhood education and teacher education is certainly her approach to creating the space and opportunities for children to share their stories through storytelling and story acting, but it is much more.