Scenario: As the director of a child development center that serves children from preschool through third grade, you are in the unique position of offering multi-age classroom settings that provide child-centered learning and teaching based on developmentally appropriate practice. You love your job and have relished, throughout the years, the keen ability of your program to offer not only a unique environment steeped in effective practice but also a program that doesn’t rush children to achieve in standardized ways. Lately however, some of the families and a few of the board members have been challenging the program’s philosophy. In specific, they are questioning why so much of children’s time and so many experiences are related to the creative arts. With a public awareness that science, math, and language arts are key content areas in other schools, you have been challenged to justify this feature of your program in particular. Actually, you are looking forward to explaining why the arts are vital to children’s healthy development and learning. As a result, you’ve called a meeting to present your thinking and the response has been terrific. You will have a full house!
As a first step, you created an outline on which you will base your presentation.