Meet Leann
My career in early education really started in high school. Our freshman campus had a small ECEAP classroom, and I spent a semester volunteering there. I fell in love with the energy of a preschool classroom. What some people might see as chaos, I felt immediately tuned into the rhythm of it. I could pinpoint groups of kids who needed support while keeping tabs on the rest. I could feel when the preschoolers needed to go outside.
I felt at home.
Finding My Way As a Teacher
I continued taking courses like child development and psychology because I was fascinated by people, relationships, and why we become who we become. When I graduated, I went straight into the early learning field.
A few years later, I found myself working as a paraeducator in the same school district where I had grown up. I worked with children who were already deeply disconnected from school. I remember going to my principal and asking him, “Where did we go wrong? Why do these kids feel this way at such a young age? What’s going on?”
That experience solidified something for me. I wanted to work with children earlier, while they were still forming their ideas about themselves, other people, learning, and what it means to belong somewhere.
I returned to early childhood education.
I spent several years with the YMCA, eventually running a before- and after-school program and managing large summer programs. It gave me experience leading children and staff, managing programs and, probably most importantly, learning how much relationships matter to the culture of a community.
After about five years, I took a break from teaching and tried other kinds of work. I found myself bored and not nearly as fulfilled.
Eventually, I landed back where I belonged, this time in an ECEAP classroom. I worked my way from assistant to teacher and eventually into family support. I fell in love with the work all over again.
And in my free time, I daydreamed about having my own preschool. I imagined being able to follow my own rhythm, one that I felt was closely tied to what children actually want and need.
A Bigger Dream
For a while, that dream was actually much bigger than a preschool.
I took a college course on starting a nonprofit and began developing an idea for a community center built around supporting whole families. I made a PowerPoint filled with pictures and ideas, invited people from different parts of my life to a local pizza place, stood in front of everyone and told them what I wanted to create.
To my surprise, people signed up to help.
For the next year, I held community meetings, talked with families and local leaders, and kept knocking on doors. Eventually, one of those doors opened and someone handed me the keys to a storefront where I could begin building relationships within the community I wanted to support.
I had taken an idea and made it real.
Then I learned something equally important: the dream was too big for the number of hands available to hold it.
I walked away from that project with my head held high. It wasn't meant to be, at least not in that form. But it taught me that I could take an idea out of my head and make it real. It also clarified something that has stayed with me ever since: I am deeply interested in supporting not just children, but the families and communities around them.
Creating Heart Center
Intentional, engaging play space
Preschoolers just wanna have fun.
Great for group games, even better for tag!
Intentional, engaging play space
Through all of this, I kept teaching preschool.
During COVID, I decided to see what it would feel like to have a small group of children in my own home. I turned our basement into a preschool classroom and tried it first with family.
It was so nice to hear the laughter and giggles echoing through our home that my husband and I decided to completely remodel the space. We created a classroom I could license and, finally, I had the opportunity to build the preschool environment I had spent years imagining.
That is how Heart Centered Early Learning was born.
My teaching isn't one particular method. It has evolved from more than two decades of watching children, trying things, learning from other educators, paying attention to what works, getting things wrong sometimes, and continuing to be curious.
I've been told over the years that my classrooms feel calm. Parents tell me their preschoolers talk about me at home and that they can see how much I genuinely love the kids and this profession.
One of my favorite things about teaching is that every year is different. The interests, personalities and needs of the children change, so the classroom changes with them. No year is ever quite the same.
But somehow, they always end the same way.
We've built relationships. We've worked through hard things. We've laughed a lot. We've watched each other grow. We've experienced enough life together that saying goodbye is always bittersweet.
A Little More About Me
Outside of the classroom, I am always thinking about how things work together. I enjoy puzzles and mysteries that keep my mind working, creative projects of all kinds, and wrapping my head around something new. I truly enjoy collaboration in both my professional and personal life. Community is at the heart of my life, and most things I find myself building have something to do with sharing, gathering, or weaving people together.
I also need alone time to recharge. That's usually when I find myself diving deep into my family's history, exploring self-development, working on something creative, or occasionally ending up at the spa and taking self-care to the next level.
There is a saying, “A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.”
I think that captures something very true to my experience as a teacher. I don't know how a preschooler's life will unfold. I just get the privilege of tending the soil for a little while.
