Mineola Teacher Chosen for Global Conference

Over the summer Denise Maynard, a kindergarten teacher at Hampton Street School in the Mineola School District, presented her research paper, “The Magic of a Creative and Engaging Classroom” at Mansfield College at Oxford University.

As a result of her presentation and abstract at the three-day 8th Annual Global Conference: Creative Engagements, her work was chosen for publication in an Inter-Displinary Press e-book on the subject.

Maynard was the only elementary school teacher from New York State and one of 35 worldwide chosen to participate in the conference.

The focus of Maynard’s research was how academic rigor can be enforced through play in a developmentally appropriate way to promote creative engagement across all grade levels.

The conference was part of the “At the Interface” series of research projects sponsored by Inter-Discplinary.net, which aims to bring people together from different disciplines to share ideas and engage in various discussions that are both innovative and challenging.

A 27-year veteran teacher in Mineola, Maynard has been teaching kindergarten for 15 of those years.

She also had her essay, “Gender Equality in an Early Childhood Classroom” published in an e-book format as a result of her presentation at a global conference in Warsaw, Poland in 2011.