Center plans for future
“It’s like straddling a razor blade.”
Those were the words said by Ray Reutzel, director of the Emma Eccles Jones Center for Early Childhood Education when describing his hectic schedule of research, publishing, writing grants for the center and more.
Reutzel, along with only a few others, is heading the efforts to more fully establish the center and help educate parents and teachers alike in early childhood education.
The center’s mission, according to it’s Web site at www.coe.usu.edu/ecc/Mission.html, is to combine research in early childhood education with educational innovation and dissemination. Presently, the center is doing research at Utah State University as well as working with the faculty and staff of the Edith Bowen Laboratory School.
“What we are is a resource for parents and teachers to come to, to give them help and training,” Barbara deBoer, graduate assistant at the center, said.
The center quarterly publishes the newsletter TOP (Tips on parenting) to more than 1,800 subscribers all over the nation. The newsletter gives parents information on subjects such as finding good child care, helping children read and so forth. The center also produces what they call Family Literacy Bags which go out to a number of school districts in the state. The bags include literacy activities to promote enjoyment in reading and teaching for families, students and teachers.
Despite the fact the center doesn’t even have a building to call its own right now, it also has many new projects in the works.
“We’re not lacking for anything to do,” Reutzel said.
Reutzel is working on a number of books as well as writing journal articles. Family Literacy Bag Project Director and associate professor of early childhood education at USU, Martha Dever, has also written journal articles recently.
Reutzel has published encyclopedia entries this year and applied to be the editor of The Reading Teacher, the largest literacy journal in the world.
Reutzel and deBoer are busy doing research and writing grants. Research is being done in all avenues of early childhood education- especially literacy which Reutzel specializes in.
“It’s really just begun and I am really excited about the direction everything is going in,” deBoer said.
Reutzel hopes that through the grants the center will be able to hire more faculty and be able to spend more time educating teachers and parents.
Some of the private money already donated to the center will go toward the construction of a building for the center. The building will be located where the Edith Bowen School is now. Portions of the school will be reconstructed ending with the result of a better school and a building for the center.
Construction will start in May or June and take two to three years, Reutzel said.