Jeannie Ginsberg: My Life's Work

A conversation with legendary early childhood educator Jeannie Ginsberg (recipient of an Essex County Legends award last year). Ginsberg, the founder and long-time leader of the Playhouse Cooperative Nursery School, originally in South Orange, made peace and compassion the central principles of her work. She will outline her vision for education based on individual learning, and learning through play, and how that vision evolved over the course of her life. “Founder the Playhouse Cooperative Nursery School in a South Orange building, Jeanne and the parent volunteers worked together to create an environment that focused on individual learning, learning through play and peace and compassion for children. Today, the West Orange-based school incorporates these principles in its co-op pre-nursery and nursery programs, transitional kindergarten, all day school and summer camp programs for more than 100 children from Montclair, South and West Orange, Caldwell and Maplewood. The school is also committed to creating classes that reflect cultural, religious and socioeconomic diversity (it offers sliding scale tuition based on annual family income.)” [From kids.baristanet.com/2012/01/coffee-with-jeanne-ginsberg-from-the-playhouse-cooperative-nursery-school/] Ginsberg (who is turning 95 in Sept.) was the school’s education director for almost 50 years, and retired in the late 1990s. If Jeannie Ginsberg is indisposed that day, we will have a colloquy on Education, with a focus on peace in recognition of it being The International Day of Peace.