About the Author
Elizabeth T. Kellogg, Early Childhood Education Advocate and Photo Documentarian , received her B.A. from UCLA in 1940, and her Secondary Teaching credential from UC Berkeley in 1941. Her professional career started as a high school English teacher in California. Raising five children led her to an interest in fresh and innovative ideas about early education that were beginning to emerge at that time (early ‘50s). She became co-director of a pioneering outdoor, nature-based pre-school program that included creative arts and an active and serious parent education component. After moving to Boulder, Colorado, she taught Head Start with the first group of year-round teachers. In 1968, Boulder County Head Start was selected as one of thirty best-in-nation, and was awarded a federal grant for the Follow Through Program to demonstrate how the experiential methods of Head Start "followed through" for success in kindergarten through third grade. Elizabeth was chosen to photo-document this experiment for the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which resulted in her Following Through with Young Children (NAEYC, 1969). This achievement led to an invitation from David and Frances Hawkins to document their innovative new program at the Mountain View Center.
In 2009, Elizabeth received the Hawkins Lifetime Achievement Award by BCAEYC (Boulder County Association for the Education of Young Children) for her dedication to education reform.
Elizabeth’s philosophy is best described in her own words: “At the time of the documentation of the Pond Study, I had long felt that the use of photography as a serious observational tool for school documentation had been neglected. The lively atmosphere of a well-functioning classroom, like good theatre, is generally but a memory in the mind’s eye of the beholder. Now, the motivation of children is a complex thing, and no picture can do justice to the full dimensions of the actual scene. But when photographs are used in constructive and systematic ways to illuminate process rather than to tab results, and when they are accompanied by words which help us to understand background preparation, setting, and goals, they can suggest some of the feeling and flavor of learning climates where there is deep involvement and commitment – sometimes even excitement. Nowadays, cameras in classrooms seem to be everywhere. ”