*During the revision of this post I met with Karyn, who in turn guided me to meet with Allison due to her background in education and child development. Both were able to narrow down and pinpoint my ideas.*

For my Senior Project, I want to focus on education.

Some Key Essential Questions that I have identified that are driving my inquiry are:

• Why does proximity to other children play a large role in the development of 5-year-olds?
• Why do elementary schools often focus on hands-on projects/why do they help in childhood development/how have teachers altered these activities due to the growing dependence on online school? 
• How does the environment or structure of a classroom affect a child’s learning and development?

 

What you see yourself doing to address these questions:

The main way that I see myself addressing these questions is that I plan on working with an elementary school class (age 5 years old). I have had some experience working with children in the past, and I would like to work with children in this type of role. I was hoping that I would be able to work with a class from LREI’s lower school because this could significantly help with convenience. It would be nice to step into a “Teacher’s Helper/Assistant” or “Student Teacher” type of role in the classroom, where I’m not leading the teaching but instead helping around the classroom and forming bonds with the kids. While not in the classroom, I plan to research more about early childhood development specific to 5-year-olds and seeing how it is appearing in real life — essentially moving between theory and practice.

 

The feasibility of what you see yourself doing:

I understand how this could not be possible, working in person at this current time isn’t something that we can rely on. However, due to the questions that I have posed, I feel like I can still achieve answers through online school. Working with the children via Zoom and learning how teachers are transferring and introducing vital parts of childhood development while online.