Rethinking Early Childhood Education
Ann Pelo has been an early childhood educator and teacher mentor for 18 years. She studied Child Development and Family Studies at Purdue University, earning a Masters degree in 1992. From 1992 until 2008 she worked at Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle as a teacher of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children and as the Mentor Teacher, responsible for professional development at the center. During that time, Pelo was active in the national Worthy Wage Campaign, an effort to improve the wages and working conditions of child care teachers.   Pelo has traveled extensively both in the United States and abroad to work with child care and Head Start teachers on emergent, Reggio-inspired teaching practices and on social justice education. She is the co-author, with Fran Davidson, of That's Not Fair: A Teacher's Guide to Activism with Young Children, and the author of The Language of Art: Inquiry-Based Studio Practices in Early Childhood Settings. She divides her time between Seattle and Utah, and works on developing practices to connect children to place.