Presented by “Teacher” Tom Hobson

About the Presentation:

Teacher Tom speaks about how children’s play brings the habits and principles of democracy into ‘early years’ classrooms. He will begin by discussing the purpose of education in democratic societies and how and why we have managed to veer so far from the original intent, which is to educate citizens capable of contributing to the grand experiment of self-governance. In this full-throated support for play-based education, he details through his illustrative classroom stories and examples exactly how his curriculum works.

About the Presenter:

Tom “Teacher Tom” Hobson is a preschool teacher, writer, speaker, artist, and author. He is best known, however, for his namesake blog “Teacher Tom’s Blog,” where he has posted daily for nearly a decade, chronicling the life and times of his little preschool in the rain soaked Pacific Northwest corner of the US. For the past two decades Teacher Tom was the sole employee of the Woodland Park Cooperative School, a parent-owned and operated school, knit together by Teacher Tom’s democratic, progressive play-based pedagogy.