› Be professionally engaged. Drs. Spodek and Katz were mentors to many, including classroom teachers, university students, and faculty colleagues. They were passionate, committed, prolific writers and the recipients of numerous awards, honors, and accolades. There are many entry points to expanding our professional engagement and connecting with colleagues beyond individual programs, schools, or institutions. These include reading and sharing Young Children articles with colleagues and families, joining NAEYC, and getting involved with local Affiliate networks( see NAEYC. org / get-involved / membership / affiliates). Goble and Horm( 2010) encouraged educators to take charge of their personal and professional development, and Mellott( 2021) helps us consider engaging beyond institutional silos.
› Be resistant to a one-size-fits-all approach. We must center children within the curriculum. Dr. Katz’ s project approach( Katz & Chard 1989) is an example of how to plan and carry out in-depth investigations of a real-world topic that is important for children and their learning. When engaged in curriculum and lesson planning, we encourage educators to find ways to incorporate children’ s interests and backgrounds and to provide authentic hands-on experiences. In addition to the project approach, play-based emergent curriculum( Schmidt & Mussman 2023) and anti-bias education( Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2019) offer other ways of conceptualizing multifaceted approaches to child-centered curriculum design.
› Be observers of children. We must attend to children’ s individual characteristics, families, communities, and cultures. In the 1990s, Dr. Spodek worked to incorporate special education into early childhood education licensure so that inclusion was part of every teacher’ s expertise. Meanwhile, in her March 1993 Young Children column, Dr. Katz called for all children in the US to become bilingual in English and Spanish and for children’ s outcomes not to be predetermined by their circumstances early in life. Both Drs. Spodek and Katz advocated for educators to see the potential within every child and to be equipped to teach to children’ s competencies. Today, it is as essential as ever to see children and their families through an asset-based lens and design curricula that honor diversity, focus on equity, and foster inclusion. Educators’ observations of children’ s learning and ways that children’ s assets enhance curriculum can be brought to light through documentation, which illustrates stories of classroom life( Shabazian 2016; Escamilla 2021).
Drs. Spodek and Katz remained dedicated to their work and were present on our Illinois campus well into their emeritus years. As we wrote this article, we acknowledged that it did not feel as if these two figures had ever truly retired. During the time they were active, the intensity of their commitment to early childhood education and the importance and respect they held for the work of the profession’ s scholars, teacher educators, and practitioners were unwavering.
As we reflect on the past 100 years— from the founding of NANE to its evolution to NAEYC to the present day— one thing we can be sure of is that the early childhood profession will continue to evolve. We urge all of our colleagues to reflect on their own work, to consider how they can advocate for children and their families, to mentor colleagues, and to promote positive forward momentum. We do this to honor the legacy of such luminaries as Dr. Bud Spodek and Dr. Lilian G. Katz, but our greater calling is to continue to serve young children and their families.
About the Authors
Mary E. Lyons, PhD, is an assistant professor and the director of teacher education at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Prior to her work as a teacher educator, she taught for 11 years in early primary grades( K – 3). Her scholarship centers around daily life in classrooms. melyons @ knox. edu
Tanya Espinosa Cordoba, PhD, is an associate professor of education in the College of Education at Anderson University in South Carolina, where she teaches foundations courses and contemporary issues in children’ s literature. She
52 Young Children
Spring 2026