Educare Learning Network and Kansas City

So the Wednesday- Friday I spent the week in Kansas City for the Educare Learning Network. I was mostly supporting the launch of their extranet, but it was a great experience to get to know some of my coworkers a bit better, learn what they do, and get to check out another Educare school. 


Kansas City - Not what I expected
I don't really know that I went in with expectations of KC, so it's hard to say that it's not what I expected but... maybe I didn't know what to expect. Plenty of good barbeque (Smokin' Guns, Arthur Bryants, and the Woodyard) - different at every place. Found fantastic cocktails at the hotel bar across the street from the hotel we were staying at (went twice, the bartender makes his own bitters and had a jar full of lavendar). KC was a lot bigger than I expected.


Being in a room with so  many inspiring women
Based on the nature of the first 3 months on the job, I haven't had much exposure to some of the top leadership of our non-profit - it was very very cool to get to hear many of them speak about the work and the growth of the network over several years. Aside from the tech consulting switch where it's just impressive to be in a room with that many women, it's very cool to be in a room these co-workers are incredibly driven and have done some amazing things with their time and dedication. The cocktail hour did weird me out a little bit - still not entirely used to seeing so many women in a room together. Definitely cool to talk with women across the country and to get to see more of the talent of the women I interact with on a regular basis!

Touring Educare Kansas City
KC was my first Educare outside of Chicago. Chicago is interesting because it was built specifically around having outdoor play spaces that were not on the exterior of the building due to gang violence in the area, but also is pretty tight on space. (On that note, one of the better stories was about one of the women that in the first days of Educare when it was in the Robert Taylor Homes, she'd go outside to smoke and the gang members would tell her about future violence and times that were bad to take the children outside. "Smoking saves, folks!").

It's amazing how strong the Educare Brand is - all of the schools have the schoolhouse logo out front. KC was amazing - the building is several stories with the Educare on the first floor, a health center, great outdoor play spaces, and lots of office space. The upper floors house other non profits that work closely with Educare as well as some of the researchers. Definitely cool to see. 





On Teaching Preschoolers Science and Engineering
I spent a while talking to Daryl Greenfield out of Miami about teaching engineering to preschoolers and preschool science curriculums. This probably can be a post in and of itself, but some of the highlights :

- Teacher Attitude - if teachers think they can't teach science, they will be nervous about teaching it. With engineering, there was no expectation they'd know engineering concepts so they were more comfortable with it.

- Fun : A huge part of teaching preschoolers.

- Tech: Using Touch screens to do assessments of understanding the concepts. Very cool. Very much up my ally!


And then I saw this, from good. http://www.good.is/post/should-3-year-olds-learn-computer-programming/ I'm also excited to hear how the Digital Media & Learning conference went from my two colleagues that attended.