I’m Ashley - wife, mom, pre-k teacher. My journey to becoming a pre-k teacher feels like a long and winding one. Early childhood has been my passion since I was a preschooler myself. My family owned a childcare center/preschool and it was clear to me very early on that I was meant for the early childhood world. I started out teaching first grade and spent two years there. The school I was teaching at added a pre-k classroom in 2014 … Somehow in all of my years of loving early childhood and determining that public school was my route, I had no idea there was a special teaching certification for public pre-k. That position was filled by someone wonderful with that certification and I began working to add the endorsement to my teaching license. 

In the meantime, I taught kindergarten with an incredible team of teachers. This is when I was introduced to Carrie Thurston, a consultant our district began contracting with. She looks at education through a different lens than most of us. She pushed us to look at things differently and to be very intentional about our planning and teaching. One of the things she encouraged was letting kids move in the classroom. She also encouraged us to work closely with our school-based OT to really understand our students. Together, we came across the book Disconnected Kids by Robert Melilo. The book validated much of what we were already doing and connected the dots for some real ah-ha moments. Our kindergarten team was like a well-oiled machine, we shared all of our kindergarteners through Carrie’s flexible grouping model. Through this model and with our new learning, we gave our kids exactly what they needed.

When our instructional coach left our school and the position opened, I made the difficult decision to step away from the classroom and my team to work with the whole school. While it was challenging to not have a classroom and to be on the outside of that well-oiled kindergarten machine, coaching brought many joys and triumphs school-wide. I was able to make connections with all of our students and teachers and many families. It also gave me the opportunity to learn more about the human brain, how we learn to read, and why kids need to move in order to learn. The icing on the cake was that I was then able to share that learning with the incredible teachers and families I worked with.

After 3.5 years in the coaching role, I served as the interim elementary dean of students in our district for 5 short months. I knew very quickly that it wasn’t the role for me. At that same time, we received a pre-k expansion grant and a pre-k classroom was added in my previous school. Because my position was interim, I had the option to go back to my instructional coaching position, but I knew it was time to step back into the classroom to do the work I’m most passionate about. Also during this time, I got my hands on the book A Moving Child is a Learning Child by Gill Connell and Cheryl McCarthy. Much like Disconnected Kids, this book validated my current practices regarding movement and learning. However, it also made the information so accessible for parents and educators. I will be sharing some of the new thinking (like the Kinetic Scale) from that book in later blog posts, but it is absolutely my top recommendation for teachers and parents.

Outside of school, I enjoy spending time with my husband, our two children and our family. We can often be found at our kids’ activities, having family movie nights, hanging out at the beach, our family’s pools, or on my brother-in-law’s boat. While everyone else enjoys fishing and exploring outside, I love reading a good book or article with a coconut milk latte in hand.

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