Jane Wiechel is the new president-elect of the 100,000-member National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Ms. Wiechel, the associate superintendent of the Ohio board of education’s Center for Students, Families, and Communities, will begin her two-year presidency in July 2002. She will succeed Kathy Thornburg.
The Washington-based NAEYC supports efforts to improve early-childhood education.
The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America has hired Donald J. Bufano to be its executive director and chairman.
For the past four years, Mr. Bufano, 51, served as the chairman of the governing body for personnel and programs at the 317-student Washington Waldorf School, a private K-12 school in Bethesda, Md.
Waldorf schools are based on the principle that children learn better if they can relate what they learn to their own life experiences. But the schools’ teaching methods have been controversial. (“The Spirit of Waldorf Education,” June 20, 2001.) About 200 Waldorf schools are operating in the United States. Of those, about 20 are public schools.
David L. Beaulieu, who had served as the director of the U.S. Office of Indian Education since 1997, was hired by the 24,000-student University of Wisconsin to be its first Electa Quinney Professor of American Indian Education. Electa Quinney was Wisconsin’s first public school teacher.
Last week, Mr. Beaulieu, 53, a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, began working at the school of education at the Milwaukee-based university.
—Marianne Hurst
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