Ms. Zeena believes that all academic disciplines can be distilled to one word, “relationships.” Reading and writing can be described at their most basic level as one relationship after another: symbols to sounds and sounds to meanings at its most basic definition. Words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, all leading to the relationships of ideas. Writer’s ideas are in relationship with the reader and so on. Math is the relationship of quantities to each other. Science is the relationship of matter to matter, elements to elements, temperature, chemicals, reactions etc. Without relationships, social studies and history would not exist. There is no academic discipline that escapes the study of relationships. Therefore relationships are Ms. Zeena’s primary focus. It is her intention to create a culture of listening and an environment that nurtures relationships. In her classroom they strive to make learning visible so that they may see the relationships between students and ideas and design experiences that capitalize on those relationships. Most importantly, Ms. Zeena believes that it is her job to listen to children.

Why Walgrove?  Ms. Zeena is invested in the community. She came to Walgrove because the neighborhood community was curious about the Reggio Emilia approach and she had extensive knowledge in this area. She was hired to be a part of this process.