Carlyn Rahynes
NAEYCNEWS
Member Spotlight
You oversee 76 educators in your program, and you liaise with multiple principals who lead pre-K programs within New York City’ s public schools. How do you describe your leadership style?
Distributive. Supportive. I also try to be transformative. For example, our city’ s 23 prekindergarten principals report to the district superintendents of elementary schools. Sometimes during district meetings, we found that pre-K issues or instructional topics weren’ t being specifically discussed. So I created a cohort where just pre-K principals can meet to talk about the early childhood issues we’ re facing, such as curriculum, budgets, and how pre-K teachers are observed and supported. The goal is to strengthen teachers’ practices as well as the cohort’ s leadership.
Carlyn Rahynes
Founding Principal Learning Through Play Pre-K Center Bronx, New York
As founding principal of Learning Through Play Pre-K Center, Carlyn Rahynes oversees the education and care of 304 3- and 4-year-olds. Part of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’ s initiative to provide free prekindergarten to all 4-year-old children in the city, Learning Through Play offers both inclusive and special education 3-K and pre-K classes to children living in New York, especially those in South Bronx. Its three centers were among the first standalone pre-K facilities in the city’ s public school system and among the first sites to welcome 3-year-olds to New York City Public Schools. Through the city’ s Department of Education, the program is now in the process of applying for NAEYC accreditation.
Carlyn’ s role is the culmination of years spent as a teacher, instructional leader, education advisory board member, and even a presenter before the National Assembly of Quebec, Canada. Here, she reflects on lessons learned and the significance of NAEYC’ s 100th anniversary.
What do these meetings look like?
We present a problem of practice( teacher recruitment, assessments, creating professional development plans) and help each other come up with solutions. We recently looked at documentation: How are teachers documenting children’ s learning and playing throughout the day? Some teachers volunteered to be videorecorded. We were able to look at these recordings and compare them to the documentation notes the teachers had made. We found that teachers tend to have more documentation in the content areas they feel most comfortable teaching. Identifying that, we were able to offer specific feedback, like“ I noticed you had a lot of documentation in literacy and language; however, you only had one or two pieces of documentation in math and discovery.”
Was this a role you always aspired to?
I thought I would be a social worker. But one day in college, I was in the library and overheard two students talking about Hunter College’ s former Training Tomorrow’ s Teachers program. It sounded delightful. I joined and was put in a kindergarten program, where I fell in love with the children and the environment. After graduating, I taught second grade.
58 Young Children
Summer 2026