Both kindergarten students and college students are expected to benefit from a new partnership between the St. Clair Catholic District School Board and St. Clair College Thames Campus.
A "shared learning space" has been set up at St. Ursula Catholic School. First and second-year Early Childhood Education students from the college will spend four hours a week interacting with kindergarten students at the school.
"It's a more hands-on experience where they're learning in an authentic classroom," says ECE Program Coordinator Brenda Huff. "How to design an early-years classroom, and then the opportunity to work with the kindergarten children when they do their assignments."
Huff adds this is a much better option than learning from a lecture.
"To learn about how to work with young children and inform those relationships is very difficult out of a textbook, or just in theory back at the college," says Huff.
Huff says St. Ursula was chosen because of its close proximity to the Thames Campus, as well as their recently constructed "naturalized play area," located right outside the classroom.
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