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Fishback Center for Early Childhood Education Preschool

Fishback Center for Early Childhood Education's Preschool Vision:

    The Fishback Center for Early Childhood Education has a history of serving as a teacher training facility and providing an outreach service to the community.  The SDSU Center for Early Childhood Education's Teaching Team envisions itself Center for Early Childhood Education as an active learning community.  We see ourselves as teacher-researchers who strive to develop relationships with children that cultivate learning and generate knowledge through active engagement in research and reflective processes.   

Fishback Center for Early Childhood Education's Preschool Mission:

    The Fishback Center for Early Childhood Education's mission is three-fold:  (1) to be a teacher training facility that uses best practices and incorporates cutting edge research into teaching practices in the Midwest region while developing teachers; (2) to be a teacher training facility that generates knowledge through the use of inquiry-based research and study, and (3) to be an exemplary outreach program provides high quality early childhood experiences for community children and their families.

Fishback Center for Early Childhood Education's Preschool Philosophy:

    We believe that all children are capable and competent beings.  All children have the ability to explore and make sense of their work.  It is our job, as teachers-researchers, to support their study and exploration through the developing the environment and presenting materials to explore their own questions and interests.  At the Fishback Center for Early Childhood Education, children have many opportunities to develop questioning and listening skills. They also have many opportunities for expressing themselves.  The main objective of the early childhood program is to provide a developmentally appropriate and positive atmosphere/environment which encourages children to develop cognitively (intellectually), creatively, physically, socially, and emotionally. 

    The curriculum is developed through teacher observation, evaluation of individual children, and careful creative planning.  We trust children to show us what and how to plan and structure their environment.  We invite families to become part of the planning process for their children.  We strive to promote a child's natural curiosity and excitement about learning.  We recognize that each child is uniquely different.  Our approach is to provide children with a rich learning environment to learn at their own pace.  When children learn they have freedom to make choices and decide what to do in a classroom, they will more actively explore, manipulate, and question objects and ideas.  The teacher's role is to be actively engaged with the children-to co-construct experiences, to observe and research their learning, to discuss and develop learning directions with parents, and to provide an environment that challenges the children.