It is such a privilege to serve on the Ontario Reggio Association Board alongside
these amazing colleagues, who are so committed to advancing understanding of
the values and pedagogies of Reggio Emilia in Ontario.

My career was in public education. Highlights included influencing the direction
and pedagogy of early learning as a Superintendent: Early Learning and Childcare
with the Rainbow District School Board, and later as Assistant Director of Early
Childhood with Bermuda’s Ministry of Education. The Reggio Emilia Approach was
a source of inspiration for transformation and change. I attended my first, a three-
week, international study week in 2009, as the new Kindergarten Program was
being introduced, and brought these experiences into dialogue with educational
leadership, professional learning, and policy development.

Working with senior leaders, trustees, educators, and community partners, I
promoted professional learning grounded in examining practice, in pedagogical
documentation processes that highlighted young children’s competencies, and
collaborative inquiry/research as a mode of learning across schools and early
learning settings. In Bermuda, this work also informed the dialogue about a
national early childhood policy framework.

I had the privilege of working with very talented teachers, early childhood
educators, and principals and collaborating with artist Sophie Anne Edwards and
the Ontario Arts Council to bring artists, ateliers, and creative inquiry into early
learning classrooms, work she documented in The Art of Land-Based Early Learning,
Volumes 1 and 2. I co-authored several articles with some of these beautiful
women.

Today, I support the Ontario Reggio Association’s Northeastern Network and,
through this work, continue to network locally with educators, artists and centres
committed to studying the Reggio Emilia Approach.

I hold an undergraduate degree in Child Studies and master’s and doctoral degrees in Curriculum: Teaching and Learning. My research interests include investigating
the theories embedded in the stories we tell, deconstructing the meta-narratives
that shape the contexts in which we live and work, and inquiring with children into
the ecological places we inhabit. I remain passionate about learning and sharing
the Reggio Approach and its thoughtful pedagogies, which offer an educational
alternative most relevant in the world we live in today.