Dr. Meadows is the Roberto C. Goizueta Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University.

He is charged by the Foundation and KSU with establishing a world class, research based, replicable Birth through Five Teacher Education Program and Early Learning Center that will serve as a model for the six Southeastern states.

He has prepared more than 2,500 Pre-School teachers to serve children in California, Florida and Georgia and in Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, France and Switzerland.

Feland L. Meadows, Ph.D. is the first Candidate for Investiture as the Roberto C. Goizueta Endowment’s Distinguished Chair of Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University’s Bagwell College of Education.

Feland Meadows was born and raised in Mexico and is bilingual and bicultural. After Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Meadows served as President of the College of the Humanities in Mexico City and as Ford Foundation Consultant for University Reform to five Central American National Universities.  He also is a founder of the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua.

When his five-year-old daughter needed a better education, Dr. Meadows visited a Montessori school in Mexico City.  He sat on the floor in a classroom one whole morning watching 3, 4 and 5 year-old children working independently, at their own initiative, with little or no intervention by the teacher.  He enrolled his daughter in that school and soon decided that he needed to change careers.

In 1970, he resigned his position as college President, employed five teachers trained in Italy and opened Sunny Hill Montessori School in Mexico City. The school served 250 children from six weeks to twelve years of age and they learned to speak Spanish, English, French and Japanese.

In 1972, Dr. Meadows met Elisabeth Caspari, who had studied and worked with Dr. Maria Montessori in India for four years.  He invited her to go to Mexico City to train him and 150 other teachers.  She stayed and helped him train many more teachers for four years.  During the seventies, Dr. Meadows had a great deal to do with improving the quality of Early Childhood Development and Education in Mexico.

As a consultant to two Mexican Presidents, Dr. Meadows researched and documented the devastating effects of malnutrition and the lack of stimulation upon the development and intelligence of millions of children who live in poverty in Mexico.
In response to his study, the Presidents ordered all Government Ministries to increase  food services tochildren in poverty throughout the country.

Dr. Meadows trained Otomi and Nahuatl Speaking Candidates as Bilingual Teachers. With these teachers, he established 125 Bilingual (Spanish and Otomi or Nahuatl) Montessori Schools under thatched roofs in Indian villages where no schools had ever been before. Dr. Meadows helped to train five hundred Nahuatl Speaking Indian Women. These women mastered skills in community sanitation, childbirth, child development, nutrition, horticulture, raising rabbits and bee keeping. These women became effective change agents in their villages!

Dr. Meadows transformed hundreds of Government Child-Care Centers in Mexico from child storage warehousing facilities, where children became retarded for lack of stimulation, into Child Development Centers, where millions of children have received stimulating, developmentally appropriate experiences and education for the last thirty years.

In 1983, Dr. Meadows moved to California where he served as Coordinator for Montessori Education for the Irvine Unified School District.  He secured $4,600,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of Education to fund an Early Intervention Program to Prevent School Failure for one hundred and seventy five at-risk 3-5 year-old children from Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Farsi and Spanish speaking communities in Irvine.

In 1995, Dr. Meadows moved to Georgia to prepare one hundred and fifty teachers for the State Pre-K Program.  He stayed on to prepare many more teachers while serving for seven years as the Fuller E. Callaway Foundation’s Distinguished Chair of Early Childhood Education at Fort Valley Sate University.

Dr. Meadows served on the Georgia State Professional Standards Commission’s Early Childhood Advisory Council from 1997-98 and on its Zero to Five Taskforce in 2003.  He proposed that the PSC create a separate credential, based upon a bachelor’s degree program of preparation, for teachers who serve children from zero to five years of age.  In response to a groundswell of support for this proposal, the Professional Standards Commission established a credential for 0-5 teachers on September 14, 2004!

Dr. Meadows has prepared more than two thousand five hundred teachers to serve children from birth to five years of age in the states of Georgia, Florida and California, and abroad in Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, France and Switzerland.

Kennesaw State University and the Goizueta Foundation have charged Feland Meadows with the responsibility for establishing a Regional Center of Early Childhood Education that can serve Georgia and the South Eastern States. In accepting that charge, Dr. Meadows indicated that a bilingual, Spanish/English, Early Learning Laboratory School, designed to serve three hundred children from six weeks to five years of age, would be needed as a model for Georgia and the South Eastern Region.  It will also serve as a site for 0-5 teacher candidates to conduct their one year practice teaching internship.

Dr. Betty Siegel, President of the University, immediately placed the Early Learning Center at the top of her list of priorities for 2004-2005.  Dr. Meadows immediately set to work, in collaboration with Dr. Wesley Wicker, V.P. for University Advancement, and with KSU Facilities Planning Architect John Anderson, in a search for funding resources and a property upon which to build the Early Learning Center Laboratory School.

CERTIFICATIONS

California State Administrative Services Credential
California State Bilingual Certificate of Competence: Spanish
California State Clear Single Teaching Credential, Social Sciences
Pan American Montessori Society — Early Childhood, 2.5-6, Certificate
Pan American Montessori Society — Master Teacher Certificate, summa cum laude
Franz Liszt, National Academy of Music, Budapest, Hungary — The Zóltan Kodály Concept of Childhood Music Education Certificate

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Meadows, Feland L. (2006) Children Are Different: Have You Noticed? – What is Essential is Invisibleto the Eye.  This research monograph is the first to be published by the Bagwell College of Education’s Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education in its new On-line Journal —Taking Teaching-Learning Seriously, 02/24/2006.

Meadows, Feland L. (2005, Sept/Oct.) Perché Johnny non sa leggere.  In Vita dell’Infanzia Revista Mensile dell ‘Opera Nazionale Montessori, Septembre/Octobre 2005, Anno LIV – N.9/10, pp.47-57. Rome, Italy: ONM.

Meadows, Feland L. (2004) SO, YOU WANT TO TEACH READING, RIGHT? The Center for Field Experiences and Partnerships, Kennesaw State University.

Meadows, Feland L. (2002, September) Normalización, disciplina y límites en el aula Montessori.  In Revista de la Pan American Montessori Society, Otoño, 2002.
Meadows, Feland L. (2002, May) Quel che é essenziale é invisibile.  In Vita dell’Infanzia Revista Mensile dell ‘Opera Nazionale Montessori.

Maggio/Giugno – Luglio/Agosto 2002, Anno LI – N.5/6, pp. 82-89. Rome, Italy: ONM.
Meadows, Feland L.  (1999, October).  Los Periodos Sensibles del Desarrollo.  In Oquetza -Hacer Camino,Gaceta Educativa de la Asociación Montessori Mexicana, A. C.,Revista #36 octubre-noviembre, 1999.  México, D.F.: AMME.

Meadows, Feland L.  (1999, March).  Montessori — Pionera del Constructivismo.  In Oquetza – Hacer Camino, Gaceta Educativa de la Asociación Montessori Mexicana, A. C., Revista #34, marzo-abril, 1999.  Mèxico, D.F.: AMME.

OTHER RESEARCH AND WRITING

A Study of Elements to be Considered in the Preparation of a Conceptual Framework for Teacher Education at Fort Valley State University, 2001-2003. Used by the Professional Education Faculty in preparation for the NCATE visit.
Institutional Self Study Report of Fort Valley State University,for the Renewal of Accreditation  Review by the MACTE Commission on Accreditation, 2003.
Institutional Self Study Report of Kennesaw State University,for the Transfer of Accreditation From Fort Valley State University to KSU by the MACTE Commission on Accreditation, 2005.

A New Early Learning Paradigm Can Help Most Children Write And Read Before They Are Six,  An Educational Research Grant Proposal submitted to the INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION SCIENCES of the USDE November, 2006.

RECOGNITION

2007 Fondazione Chiaravalle Montessori, sponsored by the President of the Italian Republic, The Honorable Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian Ministry of Culture and the City of Chiaravalle, selected Dr. Feland L. Meadows to serve as the sole Representative of the Montessori Community of the entire North American Continent.   Dr. Meadows gave two Keynote Addresses to the Maria Montessori–Design at the Service of Education International Conference in Chiaravalle, Italy, Oct. 26-27, 2007.  Dr. Meadows was awarded the Comune di Chiaravalle Maria Montessori Medal in recognition of his lifelong contributions to Montessori Education around the world.

2003 Opera nazionale Montessori, Rome, Italy -Appointed to serve on the ONM Instituto Superiore Montessori di Ricerca e Formazione, the Society’s Institute of Research and Education.
2002 Opera Nazionale Montessori, Rome, Italy – Keynote Speaker for the biennial Education and Peace Conferenceheld in Rome and Chiaravalle, Italy.
2000 Opera Nazionale Montessori, Rome, Italy – Candidate for the  International Education and Peace Prize for work with poor, and at-risk children in Mexico and the U.S. (The Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Children’s Village in India, a much more worthy candidate, was awarded the Prize.)

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES FOR TEACHER EDUCATION (AACTE)
AMERICAN MONTESSORI SOCIETY (AMS)
ASSOCIATION FOR CHILDHOOD EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL (ACEI)
AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION (AERA)
GEORGIA ASSOCIATION FOR THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN (GAEYC)
GEORGIA ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES FOR TEACHER EDUCATION (GACTE)
GEORGIA ASSOCIATION OF TEACHER EDUCATORS (GATE)
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MONTESSORI EDUCATION (IAME)
LAMAZE INTERNATIONAL, INC.
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN (NAEYC)
NORTH AMERICAN MONTESSORI TEACHER ASSOCIATION (NAMTA)
PAN AMERICAN MONTESSORI SOCIETY (PAMS)