Inquiry, Play, and Early Childhood Education w/ Heidi Echternacht

What this episode covers

If you go back through the HRP podcast archives, and I encourage you to do just that, you'll see that we've covered just about every topic imaginable in the world of education, with some that keep returning again and again. One area you'll probably notice a regrettable gap is in early childhood education, PreK-early elementary. One reason is that it's just out of the experience of the two high school social studies teachers who started the podcast, and another is that foundationally, at least for the classrooms I've visited since, PreK-early elementary tends to get a lot more right about developmentally appropriate instruction and schooling than the middle and high school grades that follow. That's a large part of why I reached out to my guest today to help unpack the ideas that make early childhood education such a powerful and important part of a child's life. Heidi Echternacht is co-founder of Kinderchat, a weekly professional conversation, resource library, and online network for early childhood advocates and educators. Created and led by teachers, Kinderchat has hosted global discussions between and among professional educators and in-service teachers for over ten years. Author of The Kinderchat Guide to the Classroom, Heidi has been an educator of children for over 20 years and currently teaches second grade in Princeton, New Jersey. Kinderchat Substack [https://kinderchat.substack.com/] Kinderchat.org [http://kinderchat.org/] Connect with Heidi on Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/hechternacht.bsky.social] Kinderchat Guides [https://www.routledge.com/The-Kinderchat-Guide-to-Elementary-School-Projects-A-Playful-Approach-to-Learning/Echternacht/p/book/9781032328959] In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia [https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780367854539/dialogue-reggio-emilia-carlina-rinaldi] Peter Gray - Free to Learn [https://nifplay.org/books/free-to-learn-why-unleashing-the-instinct-to-play-will-make-our-children-happier-more-self-reliant-and-better-students-for-life/] Visible Learners - Mara Krechevsky [https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Visible+Learners%3A+Promoting+Reggio-Inspired+Approaches+in+All+Schools-p-9781118345696]