About Erich Wimberly

The first year I taught eighth grade remedial reading. I was miserable. I was definitely teaching the same guys that I supervised at A&M, but middle school was not for me. Heaven and earth must have moved because I was dead-set on quitting by mid year yet somehow I made it through the whole year. However, I was convinced I was done with education. That next year as I was trying to figure out what to do next, I subbed at the High School. But my wife had a colleague who was begging me to come and sub for her class while she had to take a short leave of absence. I was resistant because it was a preschool classroom. I was convinced that it was the wrong fit even if only for a few days. Nonetheless, I gave in and took the spot. While I was there someone else asked me to cover their classroom, and the same pattern repeated until the principal asked me to just come in every day and cover the classes she needed me to cover. I’m not sure at what point it happened, but there was a moment where I realized that I really loved teaching Pre-K. Up until this point, my wife had been a Pre-K teacher and I knew about early childhood development learning theories from her. The school where she taught used High Scope, which is a highly constructivist approach to learning backed by the best research going back to Piaget and Vygotsky. I was a philosophy major for my undergrad degree, so I appreciated some good theory. Also, when I was in the post-bacc program at A&M I distinctly recall having a conversation with one of my professors about constructivism and Piaget; he must have recognized my affinity for early childhood theory because he asked me “have you ever thought about teaching early childhood?” I recall that I responded that I would never be good with kids that age. However, when I actually got my feet on the ground of a Pre-K classroom I discovered that I had knack for working with young children. Theory and practice collided and I’ve been sold ever since. If you know anything about early childhood education and Pre-K in particular, then you’ll know that children learn through play. Piaget famously said, “the work of children is to play.” Some imagine that learning and play are two separate things. However, I would argue that play is the method and learning is the outcome. Don’t even get me started. I could go off on this, and there’s a lot to qualify as to what I mean by play in a classroom setting which I’ll refrain from in this moment. Nevertheless, Pre-K in public school is a very interesting dynamic. There’s a real push for academics, which is fine, but preserving true early childhood education is critical. The two are not mutually exclusive, but developmentally appropriate practice can evaporate overnight as there’s so much pressure and academic push down in conjunction with untrained staff. Yes, Pre-K teachers in public school must be certified but they’re lucky to have received more than three hours of early childhood training while in college. So here I am, not just a coordinator for a program but an advocate. My goal is to preserve best practice and I genuinely believe that’s when teachers will see the best academic results. It’s counterintuitive because the temptation is to treat students like empty vessels that can be filled by the sit and get, kill and drill traditional factory model of education. But there’s so much research that shows that this approach when employed in early childhood education actually causes more damage than good. There’s a wealth of research that shows the overwhelming long term benefits for Pre-K students and society at large **IF** the students are in a high-quality program. That means you can’t just stick a four year old in any old program and slap the high-quality label on it. Rather, it has to be high-quality in substance and practice. That’s what I’m after. **Why Applied Digital Learning?** It might seem strange that I’m pursuing a Masters in Applied Digital Learning. After all, it seems to make more sense that I would get a Masters in Early Childhood Education. However, this path seems the most logical to me. For the past two decades I’ve gained a lot of understanding about early childhood through study and practice. And I really don’t see this course of study as a departure from early childhood. Some might think this doesn’t sense. True early childhood should be hands-on, play-based, and screen free. Kids are saturated in screens, so why would any respectable early childhood educator want to feed this fire? That’s a fair question, and it’s one I’ve asked myself. I actually have quite a few reasons that I believe are valid, but the one I’m going to share here is the most relevant to this particular conversation. When I was teaching, one component of the schedule was what we call small group time. I had three small groups. One was with me, one was with my Instructional Assistant, and one group was independent. Everything I put out for my kids to do is hands-on. They use real objects and manipulatives to demonstrate learning, not worksheets. However, at the independent group I couldn’t see what the students were producing nor could I give them feedback as a result. That bothered me so I tried to use an old iPhone and leave it at the table to have the kids take a picture of their work, but then how did you know whose work was whose unless they had their name in the picture? Then I ended up with so many photos that it was really inefficient to manage. Fast forward a year, I heard a colleague mention an app called Seesaw. It’s a digital portfolio that’s so user friendly that even a four year old can use it. So I tried it. I was skeptical as to whether the kids could actually use it themselves so at first I thought I’d be the one to document all of the work. But after using it for only a day I realized that there was no reason to believe the kids couldn’t handle it. So I started teaching them. Within a week, kids were documenting their own work, and because of the way Seesaw works I could easily organize that information and use it to guide instruction as well as to capture valuable authentic assessment data. In a short period of time, my classroom transformed. The sky truly was the limit. The kids were the ones doing the work, and they were the one recording everything. I didn’t have to pull them aside to assess their knowledge anymore because I could capture their learning without interrupting it through digital portfolios. These portfolios don’t just take pictures, they allow for audio recording, video recording, and digital drawing which can overlay onto the original photo. Ever since then I became a huge advocate of using Seesaw in the classroom because I believe it truly helps teachers be a better early childhood educator. It facilitates the constructivist model, the play-based model, the authentic assessment model, etc. And screen time? Kids weren’t spending more time on screens because Seesaw isn’t something you do like other learning apps. It’s something use. You use it to record and capture learning that’s happening in the real world. It increased active learning in my classroom. This experience has opened my eyes to the potential of this form of learning in all grade levels. I have long thought how awesome it would be if this kind of instruction could catch on not just in Pre-K but all throughout the elementary school grade levels. Why not secondary as well? Good practices are good practices. I’m here in applied digital learning because it’s the doorway to implement what the research has told us all along. My hope is to see the moment practice and research unite, and I’m sure it will be because technology has not only facilitated the union but made it inevitable.