Discovery Woods Learning Community was developed to offer a rich, integrated experience for young children and their families and was initially started to provide this experience to our own family.   Our focus on deep relationships and connecting people to nature, people to people and people to themselves in a warm, supportive and resource rich environment is the best of what we wanted to create for our own children.  We invite you to join us!

-Andrew and Rebecca Stoddard

A NOTE FROM REBECCA:

The field of education and early childhood education in particular has been my passion for as long as I can remember. I feel very fortunate and blessed to have found my purpose in life so early on. My outlook and approach to education and parenting has continued to evolve over the past 30 years with my own 8 children and from 26 years of experience working with preschoolers and their families, both in the classroom and as the director of an early childhood program.

My own research into educational theory and approaches, along with considerable time working with young children, brought me to a new journey in 1997. It was quite a surprise to find myself at the beginning of the journey…after so many years.

As an educator, I had never felt at ease with traditional one-size-fits-all curricula. Actually as a parent of unique people, I never felt at ease with one-size-fits-all parenting approaches, either. I knew there had to be something more…something deeper. I found it.

The answer was before me all along…in the children and in the natural world around us. It took looking at an approach to education in Reggio Emilia, Italy to give me a new perspective and to suddenly open my eyes and see the children as if for the first time, valuing them as whole, capable, contributing members of a learning community.  Later, as I experienced that my own passions for being outside and teaching children in and about the natural world overlaid perfectly with this approach, I was finally able to see the vision of the school I wanted to lead.

I still feel as if I am at the beginning of a very exciting journey.

Articulating what I have learned over the past few years and how it has changed my way of being with children has been a trial, as my own understandings seem to deepen everyday.

I have pinned down a few strongly held beliefs and have attempted to
share them in the form of the Guiding Principles.