Six Arcadia University undergraduate education majors joined Assistant Professor Dr. Foram Bhukhanwala, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Early Childhood Education Program Dr. Cindy Kennedy Reedy, and Adjunct Professor Dr. Kathy Trainor at the Annual Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children (DVAEYC) Conference held in Philadelphia on May 6.

The theme of the conference was Picture Every Child Confident and Secure. Approximately 3,000 early childhood professionals attended from across the region. The presentation was titled “Promoting Social/Emotional Development in the Young: Our Learnings from Cross-Cultural Experiences” and was an interactive workshop that included preservice teachers’ and faculties’ reflections on their experiences of working with children in various cultures across the world: Ghana, Guatemala, Spain and Tanzania.

The student participants were Chantal Barr, Amy Dunn, Shannon Goerke, Melissa Greenwald, Angelica Santos and Alicia Sharp.

“This was a wonderful opportunity for our students to present at a well-respected professional conference and specifically think about their global travels and implications of these experiences on their future classrooms,” says Reedy. “Social and emotional development is so vitally important to a child’s healthy development and educators must first understand their perspective to be able to educate and nurture others in the most effective way.”