Creative Activities and Curriculum for Young Children

About Mary MayeskyRebecca Howard

Mary Mayesky Ph.D. is a certified preschool elementary and secondary teacher. She is a former professor in the Program in Education at Duke University former director of the Early Childhood Certification Program and supervisor of student teachers. She has served as assistant director for programs in the Office of Day Services Department of Human Resources State of North Carolina. She is also the former principal of the Mary E. Phillips Magnet School in Raleigh North Carolina the first licensed extended day magnet in the Southeast. She has served several terms on the North Carolina Day Care Commission and on the Wake County School Board. Dr. Mayesky has worked in Head Start child care kindergarten and YWCA early childhood programs and has taught kindergarten through eighth grade in the public schools. She has written extensively for professional journals and for general-circulation magazines in the areas of child development and curriculum design. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was named Woman of the Year in Education by the North Carolina Academy of the YWCA. Her other honors include being named Outstanding Young Educator by the Duke University Research Council receiving the American Association of School Administrators Research Award and being nominated for the Duke University Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award. Rebecca Howard Ph.D. is an early childhood consultant professional development trainer and university instructor. She holds an interdisciplinary doctorate in educational leadership and an Master of Arts in theater. Dr. Howard is a member of Phi Kappa Phi and is a faculty member at Miami University in Oxford Ohio where she has held a variety of teaching and advising positions since 2000 in the areas of teacher education educational leadership interdisciplinary studies and theater. She founded the Oxford Early Childhood Center in 1986 and she was owner/administrator and lead teacher until the program closed in 2014. While operating OECC she created the OECC Integrated Curriculum which was grounded in creativity and culturally responsive practice as foundational pedagogical components of a comprehensive approach to development across domains. She has presented at numerous professional conferences provided extensive professional development trainings over a wide range of topics published articles for Childhood Education and Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and authored a chapter on dramatic play and gender performance in the book Children Under Construction: Play as Curriculum (2010).