Peggy Reimann has spent the last twenty five years developing the innovative teaching methods and curriculum that are at the heart of Third Way programs. Throughout her career, Ms. Reimann has specialized in working with children and adults from many cultures in a wide variety of settings. Her life’s work has become an exploration of the opportunities for real learning that are possible outside the traditional classroom.
Ms. Reimann graduated from the University of Minnesota (summa cum laude) in the late sixties, and then spent several years traveling and teaching in South America and East Africa. She is fluent in Spanish. In her travels she also learned Kipsigis (a language spoken in Western Kenya) and some Swahili. After returning to the United States, Ms. Reimann obtained a lifetime California teaching credential and spent several years working in classrooms in California. She also published a children’s book about African children (Growing Up in Kenya, Macmillan Co, 1975).
In the late seventies she and her daughter moved to the small town in Western Pennsylvania where she still lives. Over the next twenty- five years, Ms. Reimann’s professional work included a tutoring business for children of all ages and skill levels, home schooling her own daughter in her middle and high school years, training home schooling parents, and—primarily—creating and implementing new solutions and ways of working with at-risk isolated rural children, immigrant children, and more urban families and children. She has specialized in the development of teaching methods and curriculum for settings such as parent implemented pre-school programs, after-school tutoring, summer school, and English as a second language classrooms for both adults and children, and in providing practical programs for parents who want to actively work with their own children.
These wide ranging educational experiences led Ms. Reimann and her now deceased partner to a new understanding of the need to rethink the teaching and learning process, especially outside the traditional classroom. For example, they realized the importance of giving every child the opportunity to learn without anxiety or fear. In 2003, Ms. Reimann and her partner founded The Third Way. The focus of The Third Way ison making these new teaching methods, and curriculum available to tutors, parents, community leaders, and educators in order to address the problem of how to teach powerful reading, writing, calculating, and thinking skills to children—without sacrificing the more humane, learner friendly methods possible in small group and individual instruction. It should be noted that these methods and curriculae have also proved very effective with adult students of ESL and literacy.
Third Way methods and curriculum are used in settings that include: after school tutorial programs, summer enrichment programs, ESL classes for adults and children, parent training programs particularly at the pre-school level, and at home, by parents interested in supplementing classroom instruction, as well as by home-schooling families. The Third way philosophy is that every child is entitled to personal, nurturing instruction that will lead to true academic mastery, and that this is possible through a willingness to reexamine assumptions about the art of teaching and also about who can become a skilful teacher.
The following is a brief outline of current and recent projects and the skills Ms. Reimann uses in her work.
o Provide design, curriculum, training implementation, assessment and final report for an outdoor summer math program for children of all ages and their families.
o Staff training and consultation on program design for after-school program for grades 6 – 8, staff development, mentoring for math and writing classroom teachers for a .middle and high school for primarily urban Spanish speaking students.
o Co- taught a class on tutoring and the ESL student, including training, supervising, and providing curriculum for upper division students in the Department of Education or a state college campus. Supervised on site tutoring as part of the course work.
o Provided staff training and curriculum for in – home tutorial program for migrant students in an urban district in Pennsylvania.
o Provided training and curriculum for reading, mathematics and pre school tutoring for migrant and family literacy programs in rural New England.
o Did program evaluation and final report on three year grant to provide educational support for refugee children in central Pennsylvania.
o Provided staff training and curriculum (mathematics) for summer school teachers.
o Provided writing training for migrant middle school and high school students identified as potential college applicants.
o Provided curriculum, training, design, and assessment tools for a year long program that trained Spanish speaking mothers in methods and curriculum for preparing their children for Kindergarten.
o Provided curriculum, staff training, assessment for 4 week writing program for summer schools of limited English speaking high school and middle school students. |
