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Stefani Singh is showing me photos of her as a toddler at Ryerson in the mid-nineties. Here she is, peeking over a little boy’s birthday cake. And there she is, straight out of the RAC’s pool, wrapped in a pink towel and full-faced grin. And here’s a photo of Singh smiling for the camera at lunchtime, her mouth full of mushy peas.
 

Singh was one of many children cared for at the school’s Infant Toddler Centre (ITC) and Early Learning Centre. Sixteen years later, she’s back at Ryerson, completing a bachelor of arts in Early Childhood Studies (ECS) in the community where she first grew up. Part of her curriculum as a third-year student involves a placement at the School of Early Childhood Studies Early Learning Centre; one of the projects she’s working on is a retrospective for the centre’s 50th anniversary celebration October 3. The photos are a surprise find from her archival research about the centre.
 

Earlier that day the kindergarten class tumbled with activity. Budding artists and writers created, others counted ladybugs clipped to sheets of paper, added and subtracted drawings of cars on roads, and conspired on how best to build a wooden spaceship. Singh’s own memories of the ITC include circling around in toy cars, nicknaming one teacher “Marker,” and playing with her mom, who works at Ryerson in Student Fees.
 

Like many at the centre, Singh’s story is about the power of long-standing relationships. The cook/nutritionist Karen Bijai has been making lunch there for 30 years; some teacher-preceptors have been there just as long. The ELC manager, Kim Watts, started out in 1992, just before Singh arrived and was once Singh’s teacher those many years ago. Richard Lancaster, Ryerson’s first campus child, arrived in 1957 — a blue-eyed, dark-haired infant whom home economics students nicknamed “Elvis.” The son of a department instructor, Richard benefited from the babysitting component of the program curriculum. By 1963, a half-day nursery school was opened on the second floor of Kerr Hall South: a preschool program for 25 children that students would visit for observation classes, and later participate in as assistant teachers.
 

When the Early Childhood Education degree program began in 1972, changes to the nursery school soon followed. The Early Learning Centre’s full-day program was established six years later and the Infant Toddler Centre launched in a separate facility on Bond Street, though was incorporated into Kerr Hall in 1995. Then and now, the centre has operated with the aim of offering student mentorship and exemplary care and education of young children to Ryerson’s community, including students, faculty, staff and nearby residents. In addition, the School of Early Childhood Studies, including the Early Learning Centre, is now an established leader in the field, spearheading the Leading the Way conference for early learning labs from across Canada.
 

When Watts took me for a tour of the four classrooms, I noticed some childhood classics: water-based finger paints, blue sandboxes. Watts, who graduated from ECS in 1990, points out the tiny wooden gates and staircases to reach sinks that campus maintenance staff have built over the years. Currently, 66 children come to school here for kindergarten, preschool or toddler care and education.
 

Unlike other early learning centres, here, microphones and cameras dot the ceilings, used for first-year child observation courses in the undergrad program. (The centre adheres to a strict privacy policy on this. Children are observed live only, never recorded.) The naturalized playground, redesigned in 2004, offers a gated, soft-hilled space of herb gardens, sandboxes and specialized play areas.
 

All the teachers have a bachelor of arts in ECS. The kindergarten has a seamless program of before- and after-school care and a teaching team with an Ontario College of Teachers (OTC) teacher and registered early childhood educators.
 

Then there’s the curriculum itself. “The program has changed over time to reflect greater knowledge of how young children learn and grow, depending on what the research is telling us and innovations in the field,” says Watts. “In the ELC, students can put theory and research into practice.”
 

And often what’s being researched upstairs, too. Roma Chumak-Horbatsch, a professor of child language and cognitive development at ECS, credits the centre as both the inspiration and real-life testing ground for her research in childhood bilingualism. “When you work academically, you work with ‘paper’ children — those in lectures, studies and books. Whenever I want to see ‘real’ children, I go downstairs.”
 

In 2006, while Chumak-Horbatsch was reading a story to preschoolers, she discovered that close to two-thirds of the children spoke a heritage language at home. After conducting a bilingual study at the ELC and documenting the language landscape of childcare centres across the Greater Toronto Area, she developed a new inclusive classroom practice that welcomes all languages, promotes bilingualism, builds partnerships with families and helps all children understand linguistic diversity.
 

After piloting this new practice at the ELC, Chumak-Horbatsch published Linguistically Appropriate Practice: A Guide for Working with Young Immigrant Children.
 

The strategies outlined in her book are implemented in childcare centres and classrooms across Ontario and beyond — for example in Toronto District School Board full-day kindergarten classrooms. Also, the Ontario and Saskatchewan Ministries of Education have expressed an interest in this new classroom practice.
 

Another example of the centre’s approach to teaching sits at the junction hallway of Kerr Hall South and Kerr Hall East: a growing city of cardboard towers and roads.
 

Last November, the kindergarten students started building subway cars from boxes and drawing treasure maps. Within weeks, they’d combined the concepts into a 3-D map of Toronto, complete with a city hall, Ryerson campus and construction-paper Lake Ontario. “The children’s literacy and urban planning skills have flourished,” says Watts.
 

“Their maps have evolved to having north and south —they used to be just little x’s all over the playground.” Every week the children add something new, and Watt plans on featuring the finished city at the October anniversary.
 

For as long as she can remember, Singh wanted to be a teacher.
 

“I chose Ryerson because I heard [ECS] was a really great program,” she says. “And I came here a lot as I was growing up. It kind of felt like a small community here.” Coming full circle to her first student-teacher relationship, Singh’s placement at the centre involves shadowing Watts, learning the ins and outs of running an early education and care centre. She keeps vaccination records, ensures licenses are up to date, and learns the specifics of managing a budget. “Here, everyone’s on top of everything,” she says. “If I walk in and ask a teacher how many kids they have, they know. Teachers and student-teachers here communicate well with each other.”
 

When I ask Singh about the future, she’s immediately excited, detailing her plans with the same kind of jubilant energy reminiscent of the toddler in the photos she showed me. She booked a summer internship at a sports education centre in Brazil — she’s been involved in sports in some way or another all her life. But Singh also has post-grad dreams: she'd like to work in a childcare centre full-time one day, ideally in management.
 

And who knows? Maybe even at the ELC itself.
 

Chantal Braganza is a writer based in Toronto and a student in the Communication and Culture master’s program at Ryerson.