Nancy Wiltz

 Nancy W. Wiltz is Professor Emeritus and retired faculty member from the Early Childhood Education Department at Towson University, Baltimore, MD.  She earned a B.S. in Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia and taught fifth grade for five years before staying home with her own young children. Dance was always an avocation for Nancy. From 1976 – 1981 she danced professionally with the Mid America Dance Company and from 1977-1983 she owned and taught dance at her own studio in Collinsville, Illinois.  After moving to Maryland, she returned to graduate school in 1991, where she earned a M.A. and a Ph. D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1999, she joined the Early Childhood Education faculty at Towson University. She feels her interest in children’s play and play theory is applicable to sustainability education, interconnectedness, and conflict resolution. Publications on play include “Play: As children see it” in Play from Birth to Twelve: Contexts, Perspectives, and Meanings" and “Play and Scientific Literacy” in   Creative Childhood Experiences: Integrating Science and Math through Projects, Activities, and Centers.  She has also reently published What Every Teacher Should Know about Developing and Presenting a Professional Portfolio in Early Childhood Education with colleagues Ocie Watson-Thompson, Hannah S. Cawley, and Heather A. Skelley.

Nancy agreed to share her gifts as a wise elder and story teller when she and her husband Alcine Wiltz attend the MRCSE workshop...

I am excited to be one of the “wise elders/storytellers” at this summer’s Midwest Regional Collaboration of Sustainability Education.  I feel that the mix of scientists and artists, teachers and students, elders and youngsters will result in intense, joyous, and creative play for all participants. Because time adults spend at work has jumped 10 hours a week, U. S. adults have less time to play than they did 30 years ago.  Findings that play influences brain growth in children suggest that playing, though it might look ridiculous and seem purposeless, warrant a place in every person’s day.  I am looking forward to several play-filled days in June!

Nancy offers the following question to explore with MRCSE:

• If you look at what produces learning, memory, and well-being, play is as fundamental as any other aspect of life. Why don’t we do more of it?

Nancy sees plays as a powerful component of MRCSE:

I agree with Peter Gray, a Boston College developmental psychologist, who maintains that hunter-gatherer cultures preserved their playful attitudes in hunting, gathering, and other sustenance activities, partly by allowing each person to choose when, how, and how much they would engage in such activities. To play well, one must be able to see the world from another players’ perspective. Play is a means of actively promoting an egalitarian attitude, intense sharing, social harmony, cooperation, and relative quietude.  Through collaborative thinking, careful listening, and unique opportunities to unlock our accepted wisdoms, we may envision solutions to a more sustainable and regenerative future.