The Huffington Post – Byron Garrett
“As an educator, I’m always trying to keep track of the latest research and trends about how we can best help our children succeed. There are many theories about what works about motivating children to learn, what will help them develop skills of all kinds, but something that recently has been coming up a lot is that early education is the real key to students’ success. I’m a big proponent of early education and I want to share with you why this is so important. I’ve written before about how so much learning takes place outside of the classroom, which is why we have to put learning at the very center of our kids’ lives. But what we now know is that early education- which is generally the teaching of children before the age of eight- is where we really need to focus. Early education should not be seen an optional or a “nice to do”, but should be viewed as a critical ingredient on the student stairway to success. Maybe you’ve read about the seemingly constant fights over budgeting for early education, pre-kindergarten programs and the like. What you likely haven’t read is that we as communities can play a huge role in our children’s early education as well.”(more)