Early Learning, Parent Engagment, Hands-on Learning
Supporting educators to view PARENTS as PARTNERS
Bev began her education career teaching middle school and became involved with the child care industry via community service. She taught adult education courses setting the foundation for her future role of working with families. That passion blossomed in the role of Parent Involvement Coordinator. Presenting workshops, giving consulting support, and creating resources for families were steps that followed. She was honored to writing a book to encourage early childhood educators to partner with parents. The experiences shaped her purpose of supporting parent engagement in the early learning community where the lifelong journey to success begins.
Bev has been an educator in the classroom, worked with adult learners and families, and also coached early educators to enhance quality---while enjoying the joys of raising three children. Starting a business creating games led to writing and self-publishing books to complement the game concepts. The intent of the literacy kits was that games make learning fun and they could be used in the classroom but also shared with families to extend learning. An invitation from an association led to co-authorship of a book supporting parent and family engagement practices by staff in the early care and education field. Learning results from a partnership between a student's home and school experiences.
Writing and sharing ideas via blog posts is a new endeavor for Bev. Her first professional writings were games designed to support early learning skills. The games were created so that families could partner with early learning programs to extend learning at home. Games paired with books, supporting the concepts introduced, further supported cognitive growth. Bev self-published 11 books that are paired with the games in fun-learning kits. The addition of other languages was a natural outgrowth of educational outreach to serve families of diverse backgrounds. To date Bev offers books in Spanish/English, Arabic/English and Chinese/English.