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Acknowledgments As always, our families, colleagues, and friends have
been incredibly supportive of us during the writing
of this book.

We have learned to be better writers, thanks to
working with our editor, David Heath at Redleaf
Press. For this second edition, we are deeply grateful
that he stuck with us, even though the demands of
his family and work responsibilities might have led
him to pass this book on to another editor. He sup-
ported us through difficult cuts in a manuscript that
was far too long and offered valuable feedback for the
structure of the text.

The staff of Redleaf Press with whom we worked,
particularly Kara Lomen, Alyssa Lochner, Sue Ost-
field, Doug Schmitz, Jim Handrigan, and Ashley
Robinson, had the challenging task of balancing our
fierce advocacy for early childhood educators in the
trenches with their publication guidelines, produc-
tion standards, and marketing agendas.

Every book we write is a collaborative process,
not only between the two of us, but also including
a wide range of early childhood educators who gen-
erously welcome us into their lives, minds, family
child care homes, classrooms, and program cultures.

People contributed far more stories and photos than
we were able to use in this book, but all their contri-
butions have made their way into our thinking and
will no doubt appear as examples in the workshops,
presentations, and consultations that are central to
our professional lives. We are enormously grateful for
the engagement and generosity extended to us across
North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Italy.

We want to specifically acknowledge the following
individuals and organizations and apologize for any
unintended omissions:
Evie Lieberman opened her home to us for our
initial writing retreat to launch the first edition of
this book.

Pauline Baker and the Tucson Children’s Proj-
ect hosted a wonderful gathering of colleagues and
loaned us a copy of The Power of Protocols: An Edu-
cator’s Guide to Better Practice by Joseph P. McDon-
ald to stimulate our thinking. This recognition of the
value of protocols for educators ultimately led us to
advocating for protocols as a valuable tool for profes-
sional development.

During that gathering, Teresa Acevedo thrilled us
with her courageous act of resistance against bureau-
cratic mandates that would undermine her Head
Start program.

Our work over many years with Ann Pelo has been
invaluable to our thinking and ability to understand
how educators can translate philosophy and theory
into concrete practices. Ann has contributed numer-
ous stories to each of our books and been featured in
a series of videos about teaching in early childhood
programs. Analyzing how Ann worked with children
and then as a mentor with teachers enabled us to
co-construct the Thinking Lens ® Protocol with her,
which has become the heart of this book; one of Ann’s
own books, The Language of Art (2017); and most of
the work our associates do with Harvest Resources.

During our year of writing the first edition, Tom
Hunter sang and collaborated with us to come up
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