Our latest spotlight interview is with Mariam Dahbi who is a PhD in Education candidate at Harvard University with a concentration in Human Development, Learning and Teaching. She is also a singer/songwriter. Check out her music’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/carpegoldiem/

Teddy: 1. What experiences have you had working in early childhood education and care?

Mariam: Most of my experience took place in Morocco, where I was born and raised. During my college years in Morocco I spent a few months volunteering at a house that hosted children who had traveled far from home to receive cancer treatment, so they were also missing school for extended periods of time. Some of these children were quite young, missing the foundational years of schooling, so I facilitated Arabic, French, and English language, literacy and music activities. After graduating from college I worked as Assistant Teacher in 2nd and 5th grade, after which I finally had the opportunity to teach PreK as a Lead Teacher at my college’s affiliated Prek-12 school. It was an English-medium school with a mix of Moroccan and international students. I still remember the academic year 2013-2014 as the most fulfilling year of my professional life. At the time there was no official PreK curriculum for me to use so I had to create it along the way! From picking books at the library to creating centers activities to choosing and administering assessments, everything was pretty much up to me to set up. 

Thankfully, my teaching team was creative and supportive and we managed to have lots of fun while ensuring our students were ready for Kindergarten. I am still in touch with my students to this day!

Teddy: 2. Were there any college courses, mentors, or professional development experiences that stood out as being helpful to your work?

Mariam: My relevant academic/professional training took place after the teaching experience I described above. Much of my teaching then was intuitive and based on observing higher grade teachers and looking things up online. I knew I had to go back to school to learn about the theories and research based practices one should strive to know and implement in early childhood education and care. My Masters of Education in Language and Literacy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education was the perfect next step for me. Dr. Pamela Mason was my advisor, and she and the Language and Literacy faculty gave me excellent academic guidance. I immersed myself in child development courses, learning from Dr. Catherine Snow about the features of oral language development and how it influences literacy development; (side note: it’s in Dr Snow’s class that I met you, Teddy. My final project for the class was an analysis of the pitch and prosody of PreK teachers, and you were one of my study participants!) Dr. Paola Uccelli taught me about models of reading comprehension and introduced me to the experiences and trajectories of bilingual learners (this was eye opening for me, as a bilingual learner myself); Dr. Paul Harris described the psychological changes that occur in the first few years of childhood such as the development of theory of mind. Importantly, Dr. Terry Tivnan taught me the language of statistics, giving me the self confidence to read (and, later, write) quantitative research papers. 

Nearly all of the faculty I mentioned gave me the wonderful opportunity to assist them in teaching their courses in later semesters , which consolidated my love for teaching and for the field of education research. Most relevant experience was assisting Dr Snow in teaching the  yearlong “Quality in Early Childhood Education” graduate research practicum. Being a TF (Teaching Fellow, aka Teaching Assistant) in this course gave me the opportunity to teach and engage in early childhood education research and start thinking about my own potential contributions to the field. 

 Five years later, as a research assistant in Dr. Snow’s research lab, I was trained to observe PreK classrooms using two instructional quality measures: CLASS and COEMET. This professional development opportunity gave me the close observational skills I needed to think about the concrete elements of quality in early childhood education  programs: this experience gave me the tools to now conduct my own studies for my PhD dissertation.

Teddy 3. You are a singer/songwriter; what are some ways you think music can be incorporated in early childhood education? 

Mariam: I think that both singing and songwriting should be incorporated more in early childhood spaces. Most of us associate music with the benefits of rote memorization, typically in monolingual settings. But with today’s increasing  classroom language and cultural diversity, singing is the perfect medium for inclusion: teachers and children can learn to sing familiar songs in languages other than the language of instruction, which can spark children’s multilingual curiosity while making speakers of the language feel welcomed and valued. Some early childhood educators already do so when they feel comfortable singing in unfamiliar languages. I think it would be important to introduce more educators to the idea of experimenting with unfamiliar language through singing.

But singing isn’t enough, in my opinion. I think that creating music can be incorporated in early childhood programs more: giving children opportunities to experiment with melodic and rhythmic patterns, associate various sounds with emotions, and create new lyrics to songs they’ve learned, are all ways children can engage with music in a more active way, giving them more space to develop their own authentic voices. 

Teddy: 4. If you could talk to politicians and policy makers about early childhood education and care, what would you tell them?

Mariam: Realizing your vision for the future of our society will greatly depend on the time, care, and resources you put in early childhood education and care. Each and every early childhood policy affects not only the young child you’re targeting, but also the adult the child will become, decades later, the children this adult will raise, as parent and/or teacher; and the teacher who teaches the child. 

It is paramount that we all embrace and appreciate the extent of human diversity by harnessing the knowledge, skills, and social network that each young child carries from home to school. Investing in universal, quality, pluralistic early childhood and care programs will get us as close to a much-fantasized “guarantee” of a future of peace, mutual understanding and progress as possible.

Teddy: 5:. What makes you optimistic about the future of ECE and what do you think are the biggest challenges to improving quality?

Mariam: I’ve been observing preschool classrooms and have noticed the efforts and love that teachers, assistants, volunteer parents and grandparents, and administrators put into the education and emotional well-being of young children. These classrooms look and sound different from the preschool classrooms my friends and I attended. It certainly makes me optimistic to see how welcoming, language-rich, and joyful these classrooms are. 

Much of the quality of early childhood education has to do with the quality of the curriculum as well as the teachers’ ability to implement it with strong fidelity. In my opinion, the curriculum needs to make more space for multilingual and multicultural conversations between teachers and children, as well as among children. With more than a third of young children learning in a different language than their home language(s), it’s important that we think about optimal ways to engage all children in conversations and activities that expand their horizons and connect them in ways that make language ability secondary to the value we ascribe to one another (e.g., “I may not be fluent in English right now, but I am fluent in Haitian Creole”). Quality in education must be considered in close relation to our ability to support and foster the development of linguistically and culturally diverse, curious, and confident groups of children.

You can watch a video of Mariam performing below: