Community Connections: The Growing Place is an active member of the Santa Monica Child Care and Early Education Task Force and The North Bay Chapter of the Southern California Association for the Education of Young Children.
We collaborate with other programs in our community interested in constructivist ideas and approaches to teaching inspired by the schools in Reggio Emilia. The Growing Place believes that all children deserve a quality early childhood education. Since we are limited by space in the number of families we can serve each year, we have several programs to support the development of students of child development and teachers from other programs. Mentoring Educators:
Growing Place teachers serve as mentors for practicum students from Santa Monica College, UCLA extension and Antioch College. Both the Marine Park and Ocean Park teachers mentor adolescents taking the Careers with Children class for semester-long placements. Several of our teachers have been selected as California Early Childhood Mentor teachers. We host both part I and part II of the Administration and Supervision Class for Early Childhood programs for UCLA education extension. Several times a year we host workshops open to parent and teachers. Events for the Community:
The Ocean Park campus hosts a Dino Fair annually in the spring. This event, tailored especially for young children, is a fun filled, developmentally appropriate fair, the primary purpose of which is to raise funds to help low income families with tuition assistance. ReDiscover is a non-profit, community resource that promotes creativity in early childhood and elementary education while encouraging environmental responsibility. We recycle everyday discards donated by businesses, such as plastic, fabric, wire, wood, metal, glass, and more and give them new purpose as hands-on learning materials. For more information, please go to rediscovercenter.org Connections for Children:
