Welcome

Welcome to my site. I am Tom Drummond, an emeritus educator of children and adults and a student of both. Now that I am retired I have time to create the kind of site I wish I had encountered long ago – one that had practical ideas with nothing to market. Over the years since 1970 when I started learning about schools for young children, I developed resources for early childhood educators and families. I am making available as much as I can possibly put online for anyone to take forward in the way they wish.

The navigation around here may not be immediately clear. I have a labyrinth of 80 pages so far. One page may offer access to other nested pages, each of which may open to links to downloadable files you can use freely. The main navigation panel on the left appears on every page to provide access to main topics.

Everything at this site is open for you to use and duplicate. No worries about $ £ лв ﷼ ₩, etc. No permissions are needed. You can download anything you wish to keep for yourself or give to others. I keep writing almost every day, so if you revisit in a few months you might find a new topic area appear. I wish to put up everything I have developed in my early childhood education courses. I figure I am about half done.

Enterprise Talk

This is what I have learned about how to actually change my own behavior to become more authentic with children and act in a way that is congruent with my values.

Advocacy

Millions of people are energized to take action for children. Here are resources that can help combine our efforts to advocate for children and co-construct our vision of early childhood. Included are the 16 Capabilities — observable outcomes for early education — and proposed national values for the USA.

Portfolios

Here is a simple way to create a lasting record, and a reflective record, of the key essentials for educators and parents to look for and celebrate in each unique child.

Learning Stories

I offer a set of examples of Learning Stories for you to download, discuss and offer to others in order to spread ever more widely the practice of pedagogical narration following the lead of Margaret Carr and Wendy Lee in New Zealand — Aotearoa.

Video Provocations

On this page are short video segments selected to promote discussions among educators. No narration is included. People watching them will have differing points of view, so greater benefit accrues when people watch together.

Small Group Time

A regular meeting time with an adult and 4 to 6 children can be an essential part of a great school. Here are ways to lead this opportunity.

Best Practices in College Teaching

I offer one short paper in which I have collected and organized specific, visible actions that challenge one to be an effective instructor or professor in higher education.

Listening to Students

I offer what Kalyn Shea Owens and I wrote applying documentation to first year general chemistry. This applies Making Learning Visible (Reggio Children and Project Zero) to group learning at the tertiary level.

Connecting to Children

Imagine all adults worldwide — parents as well as pedagogues — altering their inherited habits of relating to children and — in concert with others — co-constructing a more enhanced way of being for their own children's benefit. Here is a path for local, cultural, and community growth — very different than traditional approaches to adult education.

Tom Drummond