Woodland Park is delighted to welcome the newest member of our teaching staff, Teacher Quinn to lead our unique play based cooperative kindergarten program!
Quinn has worked for the last five years supporting students receiving special education services in traditional schools as a paraeducator and as a certificated teacher with endorsements in Special Education and Reading. Before that, they taught beginning and intermediate French at UCLA while working on a PhD in French and Francophone Studies. They have a Master’s in Education from the University of Washington with a focus on High-Incidence Disabilities. Quinn is also a licensed foster parent. They and their partner have been caregivers for four years, and are expecting their first biological child in Summer 2024.
All of these experiences nourish Quinn’s approach to teaching. They are very aware of how educational systems can claim to support the learning, growth, and welfare of children while at baseline perpetuating harm and oppression. Quinn seeks to understand their complicity in these systems as the only way to push beyond them. Their approach to teaching holds at the center the protective power of education in the lives of children, their families, and their communities. With deep commitments to Disability Justice, Quinn continually seeks to increase access and minimize barriers between children and their opportunities for learning, growth, and belonging. They see moving into alternative and co-operative learning spaces as a way to teach more in alignment with their values.
“I am always questioning what it means to be an adult entrusted with teaching children: what it means to guide and empower and curate without becoming a gatekeeper or an obstacle to a learner’s one wild and precious life. When I completed my teacher preparation program, I thought I finally had all the skills to go along with the right mindset. It turns out the most important work is still figuring out when to come alongside a child and when to get out of their way. What if it’s not that I’m entrusted with teaching children, but that I’m entrusted with trusting children? Then what do we get up to together?
“Teaching and learning are not possible without love, and loving children necessarily requires loving their caregivers. It matters to me to create learning environments and to lead learning communities that center the wholeness of children as well as their families, all while appreciating and celebrating the deep truth that is our interdependence. I am excited to have been hired by parents, to be accountable to parents, and to work alongside my students’ first caregivers and teachers.”
Woodland Park Cooperative School 