Early Childhood Education: Learning Together
Virginia Casper is a developmental psychologist and teacher educator who has worked for over thirty years with children and families in early intervention and research. She is on the graduate faculty at Bank Street College of Education, where she directed the Infant and Family Development and Early Intervention Program and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Graduate School from 2002–2007. Virginia has also worked internationally, for the past decade, in South Africa. Her current work there involves a community-based, participatory research and curriculum development model that includes community training in HIV/AIDS prevention and infant/toddler group care and advocacy. Her work on attachment, gender, and teacher-parent relations has been published in Teacher’s College Record, The Harvard Education Review and Zero to Th ree. She co-authored a previous book entitled: Gay Parents/Straight Schools: Building Communication and Trust (1999). She and her partner, Donna Futterman, are the parents of an adult son.Rachel Theilheimer Rachel has worked with young children, their families,and teachers in public school, private and public child care, Head Start, and parent groups. She has been a teacher, a group leader, a director, and an educational consultant. For the past twenty-five years, she has taught adults at the pre-GED, community college, bachelors, and graduate levels and conducted numerous professional development workshops. She is professor of early childhood education at Borough of Manhattan Community College where she chairs the Teacher Education Department. She has published articles and book chapters about teacher education, social justice issues, and infant care.