This new course offering introduces students to the sociopolitical context of early childhood education in U.S. schooling. First, students will analyze how affordable, accessible, and high-quality early childhood education increases educational equity, upward mobility, and overall quality of life. Furthermore, students will understand the ECE educator shortage and its relationship to social inequities. Finally, students will research policies and practices, such as the Colorado Universal Preschool Initiative and Workforce Innovations, to envision a promising future wherein young children and their educators collectively thrive.

This course begins with overview of the sociopolitical context of gender specific and LGBTQ+ policies in the U.S. Next students will critique how these contexts influence normative educational models and power structures that inhibit K-12 student development and inclusion. Finally, students will explore inclusive curricula and practices that foster a safe and empowering schooling experience.

In collaboration with CC Outdoor Education and Field Study, this course explores the history of outdoor education, the psychology of transformative experiences, and the “hard and soft skills” of outdoor leadership, including technical skills, risk management, planning, communication, and differentiation, with the goal of facilitating equitable, sustainable, and transformative experiences in the outdoors. Further, the course will examine outdoor recreation’s relationship to land, resources, and inequities (e.g., race, gender, income, dis/ability) that outdoor leaders should know and address. Outdoor field experiences as part of the course will help demonstrate the skills and topics covered.

In this course we will study the history of Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and Waldforf schooling in Europe: including the social and political contexts during which these pedagogical approaches were formed, and the problems their founding theorists sought to remediate. We will then examine how these pedagogies made their way to the United States, and the ways in which they have been interpreted, and sometimes appropriated, to construct and reproduce a narrative of childhood that, in capitalist, market-based schooling system, idealize the child in progressive schoolings as wealthy, white, and non-disabled.