Marjorie Vannoy Fields

Dr. Marjorie Fields writes to help teachers and parents understand children's thinking. Her goal is to help adults respond to children's needs rather than to blame kids for behavior they cannot control. One important way of accomplishing this is to help adults understand children's physical, emotional, social and intellectual development. Only with that understanding can any kind of effective teaching occur - whether it is how to read or how to behave in helpful ways.

Marjorie says that she started in first grade to realize that much of what happens in schools is not good for kids - and therefore makes teachers' lives harder too. The more she observed of typical adult-child interactions, the more she believed there had to be better ways. Her studies of early childhood development and education gradually revealed those better ways and Marjorie made it her life's work to help other people understand them.

After having taught young children in kindergarten and first grade, Marjorie completed her doctorate in early childhood education and went on to teach teachers. Her writing and research have mainly focused on how understanding of child development can be used in two difficult areas:

1) to prevent most behavior problems and to turn other behavior challenges into learning situations, and

2) to help children learn to read and write - and to WANT to do so.

Marjorie credits her experiences as a mother and a grandmother with deepening her understandings of children and the unique nature of each one. These experiences also give her empathy for adults dealing with the demands and complexity of raising children.