Bank Street College of Education

In Bank Street Head Start’s classrooms young children learn by experimenting and exploring materials and resources. Teachers encourage children to make discoveries and provide them with enough time to “make meaning” of those experiences. Much of the time children collaborate with each other and share individual experiences such as discussing a story they have heard or a play experience they have had.
Our philosophy provides for:
Experiential education: carefully designed and executed education experiences that are reconstructed and reflected upon in a variety of ways through talking drawing building and acting;
Constructivism: the idea that a child makes discoveries from observations explorations and experiences and uses all these to construct understanding. Constructivists say that the child is “the maker of meaning;”
Ownership of learning: because children are directly involved with the environment and with various learning experiences they will feel more invested and more excited about learning;
Relationship building: continuity of care for two years with the same teachers allows children to build deep trusting relationships with their teachers and their peers.