BLOCK Fest  

Bill Marsh When I was eleven, my family moved near my grandfather’s small NH dairy farm. I worked with him, and he told me stories about when he had been a physics professor. Robert Frost read poems about such farms when he visited Dartmouth, where I studied math for eight years, getting a Ph.D. in 1966. I taught math at Talladega College for three years and then went to the beginning of Hampshire College, where I helped design and implement what we think was the first undergraduate program in cognitive science. During that time, I taught math one semester at Evergreen and computer science one summer at UW. I committed administration, at both Talladega and Hampshire, and did research in mathematical logic, first in pure model theory, then in applications of logic in linguistics and computer science. After that, I left Massachusetts for California, where I worked as a minor administrator at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for two years, followed by two years at the Institute for Research on Learning there and as a post doc in math education at UC Berkeley. My twenty year interest in how we can teach young kids about real numbers began at this time, as well as my interests in finding good ways to include some ideas from linear algebra in K-8. In the fall of 1998, I taught mathematics for elementary school teachers at Eastern, where I did the course work necessary to get a secondary math credential. I have been a long term substitute math teacher at three secondary schools in Port Angeles. Lost month, I got a little experience with pre-school math, helping bring Block Fest to Clallam County. I have just ordered a prepublication version of the National Academy of Science’s research review "Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths Toward Excellence and Equity." My main interests outside of math and education are my family (always), politics (occasionally), reading (mostly history these days), and the Japanese martial art aikido. Diane Demarest, M.Ed. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and completing an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital, I began what I thought would be a life time career as a Child Life Specialist. Providing therapeutic interventions to children and families in a milieu of play, I spent the next ten years working in Atlantic City, NJ, Rochester, NY, Pittsburgh, PA and Boise, ID. I had wonderful opportunities to create and innovate in the fast-paced world of children’s hospitals. The following decade I had three children of my own providing me with a ‘Piagetian-like’ experience; video camera in hand, I recall following my first child Allison around as she learned to crawl, pull to stand and build her first block tower. I could always play for hours with Allison, Ben and Drew, and never doubted for a moment that play meant valuable learning for them. My enduring curiosity about early learning has been satisfied and nurtured in a variety of venues beyond home and the hospital. In 2004 I completed a graduate degree that began in infant development in 1983 but concluded in adult and organizational leadership. During my eight year tenure at the University of Idaho I had the opportunity to direct a state-wide parent education program and to create new tools to support that program. The development of BLOCK Fest™ began as a simple exercise to create a parent group meeting that reflected the best practices of early education and adult learning theory; and grew over the course of five years to a nationally recognized program to shape understanding about early math learning and the important role of parents in that process.