Jul. 18—CORBIN — The community came together Friday to celebrate a ribbon cutting for the Housing Authority at Vanbeber: A Collaboration of Educational Excellence.
Robert Hayes, Executive Director of Corbin Housing Authority, has a long educational background in addition to his business background and took the opportunity to take an empty space and provide an educational opportunity for the community.
"It was like a blank slate so I redid the walls, put new flooring down," Hayes said. "I asked who could we reach out to to really try to make a difference."
Corbin Housing Authority partnered with Corbin Public Library, Corbin Family Resource Center and Save the Children to combine education with practices rooted in educational research and data from physicians, educators and innovators like Piaget and Montessori.
Mark Daniels, the principal from Corbin School of Innovation, brings experience to the mix as that school also uses teaching techniques rooted in the same proven methods of teaching.
"We are heavily involved in promoting literacy and literacy activities," Daniels said. "We had this community building available to do family literacy activities and Mr. Hayes and I got together with our partners and pulled this center together to focus on early childhood and family literacy,"
Hayes research on neuroplasticity of the brain inspired the young age focus for the learning center.
"Experiences, particularly healthy experiences like good diet good education system helps fortify the brain. These children's brains are the most malleable," Hayes said. "I was excited when Daniels reached out to me. I said, 'let's do something to touch the lives of people in Corbin where children don't have a lot of stimulation and we can have the most impact.'"
Hayes used the front entrance as an opportunity to get the community interested by using bright colors and short background information of the teaching philosophy used within its doors.
"Those signs out front, something that was important to me was to not have this random put together but have well thought out learning stations and actually bring in the academic theory of Piaget, Dr. Garner, multiple intelligences, many ways to be smart, Marie Montessori, into a practical application into the community."
Sarah Floyd, the early childhood coordinator with Save the Children in Corbin, will be spearheading the educational work being done within the building.
"This place is a learning center overall. With Save the Children we promote literacy and language development and other areas of development," Floyd said.