Carla Horwitz spends her time teaching undergraduates about child development and directing one of the nation’s premiere early child care centers: the Calvin Hill Day Care Center and Kitty Lustman-Findling Kindergarten. In our conversation we talk about how these two jobs overlap, the importance of quality early education, and how college classrooms should be places for creativity and play.

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Show Notes

0:00 ⏯ Intro

2:27 ⏯ What happens at the Child Study Center

4:20 ⏯ Anna Freud at Yale

6:44 ⏯ Balancing rules and wiggle room

• Richard Feynman (playing with ideas)
• The Learning Alliance Inventory of Daniel Rogers

12:34 ⏯ We think about education as nurturing, but that’s not the same as hugging people all the time.

13:42 ⏯ “Disequilibrium is the way that people learn. It can’t feel good all the time.”

15:30 ⏯ How do you incorporate the values and lessons of progressive education in your Yale classes?

• John Dewey (Learning by doing)
• Curriculum Is What Happens by Samuel Braun (1970)

16:20 ⏯ Using materials to explore and express a problem. “grim and joyless places with cookie-cutter artwork” vs. having a beautiful place to learn

20:14 ⏯ Progressive education: “It takes longer, and it’s messier, but they own it.”

23:30 ⏯ Making emotion a part of education. Executive function taught through play.

26:50 ⏯ “It annoys them that we don’t spend the whole class talking about the reading.”

28:05 ⏯ “This was the most meaningful class I had at Yale.”

31:23 ⏯ Helping students do experiential and practical work while guided by theory

32:39 ⏯ What kind of students study child development?

35:21 ⏯ “Education is a trade.”

39:00 ⏯ “I’m gonna be a better parent.” Bring this knowledge to your community.

40:08 ⏯ Teaching with your disciplinary equipment.

41:28 ⏯ Learning at Sarah Lawrence College was experiential and demanding.

42:31 ⏯ Re-inventing progressive education. “We were going to change the world.”

43:44 ⏯ Urban education: “I don’t care what you do in your classroom, just line ‘em up quietly in the hall.”

46:16 ⏯ What should be different about teaching college students and three-year-olds?

48:00 ⏯ How international students are different at Yale. Knowing how to be wrong and to play.

51:57 ⏯ What to do about students who don’t do the work. Learning how to learn.

54:48 ⏯ Learning how to observe.

57:10 ⏯ Learning is not just cognitive. You can’t compartmentalize–but we do.