Wild Roots Playschool

Our Teachers

Mega Crawford, Playschool Director

Mega has a Bachelor’s Degree from San Francisco State University in Child and Adolescent Development with a concentration in Early Childhood Education. Mega began working with young children as a Naturalist ten years ago. Over the past decade, Mega has held positions in various teaching environments from teaching environmental science in the forest to teaching in early childhood classrooms. When interacting with young children, Mega takes notice of each child’s individuality, emphasizes their creative strengths and loves to facilitate music and movement activities. When not teaching, Mega likes to spend time delving into theatre activities, performance based art projects, bicycling, making herbal medicine and practicing music. She recently put out a children’s album which can be found here: www.megabloommusic.wordpress.com.

Philosophy

Wild Roots is a peaceful-parenting community of families and children who are committed to environmental and social justice, self-work and growth, presence and mindfulness, and interdependence with one another and the earth.

Location

Wild Roots Playschool meets in the green spaces of San Francisco: Glen Canyon, Presidio and Golden Gate Park.

About our program

Vision

Connection: We value building strong connections with ourselves and children, with each other, and with the wider community, recognizing our interdependence as well as honoring our unique selves and paths.

Growth: We create a space of exploration and experimentation in which all members of the community, both children and adults, can continually learn from one another and the world.

Presence: We practice being present and mindful with our children and with one another in order to experience the fullness of life and our connections to each other and the world.

Justice: We acknowledge our interdependence with each other and the earth and take action to create a more just and equitable world.

Guiding Principles

• We believe children are whole beings that need to be honored, respected and heard.
• We value building and maintaining strong connections with our children.
• We believe in the importance of secure attachments and healthy interdependence.
• We value a full range of emotions, understand emotions can teach us about ourselves, and believe the release of big feelings is the body’s natural emotional repair process.
• We believe that all acting out behavior is communication of a need and/or developmentally appropriate.
• We encourage individuality and value differences in personality, temperament, interests and self-expression.
• We value and foster our children’s innate wonder of and connection to the natural world.
• We recognize that the primary work of childhood is child-led, imaginative play.
• We believe children know themselves best.
• We listen to and respect the pace of each child’s growth and learning.
• We recognize the importance of touch in regulating and showing care to our children.
• We believe in modeling and encouraging an inclusive environment for our children.
• We believe in supporting children through conflict resolution involving restorative justice.
• We develop consciousness and resist biases about gender, race, skin color, class, culture, sexual orientation, etc.
• We foster a passion for social justice in our children.
• We trust our children and our own instincts over mainstream culture.