Participants will understand what Stories from the Field are and how they highlight the educator’s voice and reflective process.
Participants will reflect on a shared Story from the Field and then have an opportunity to reflect on their own practice.
Participants will come away knowing they have a team available to help them reflect and articulate their own Story from the Field.
Facilitated by Lisa Plotkin and Eli Eshel
Lisa Plotkin, M.Ed., has been an early childhood educator since 2004 in Washington, DC, Boston, MA, and Richmond, VA. Since 2011 in Boston, the Paradigm Project has been a guiding force for her career and personal values. She was a proud participant in the Jewish Community Center Association (JCCA) Sheva Center Leadership Institute (SCLI) which further impacted her values-based approach to practice and life in general.
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She has been active with Shma Koleinu (Hear Our Voices) since 2020, focusing on early childhood advocacy, and in 2023, she founded a grassroots group, Virginia Early Childhood Advocates. She believes that educators deserve and need quality dialogue and reflection outside of the classroom, and has found most recently that the Stories from the Field project is one way to achieve that.
Born and raised in Israel, Eli Eshel graduated from Seminar Hakibutzim College with stage design studies and has worked with various theaters in Israel. Eli has taught puppetry and arts and crafts to elementary-age students at the Israeli American Embassy school in Israel. Since moving to St. Louis in the summer of 2016, Eli has been a classroom educator at the Saul Spielberg Early Childhood Center.
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Starting with her first Community of Practice in 2021, Eli has embarked on a learning journey with The Paradigm Project and has fallen in love with the Professional Development world. Eli's passion is sharing stories from her practice with the field and hopes to be able to help others share their stories as well.
Eli is excited to have recently enrolled at AJU in their Bachelor of Arts program in Early Childhood Education.