Pacific Oaks College & Children’s School alumna and former administrator and faculty member in Seattle, Barbara Daniels, Ed.D., has established herself as a pioneering force within the many roles she’s taken on throughout her life. Her expansive and storied career in childhood education began out of necessity but grew into a true passion with a mission inspired by the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
As a young mother in the ’60s, Daniels often found herself seeking help caring for her energetic child during a time when child care was far less common. Through this experience, she developed a heightened awareness of the need for quality care that would also help children grow and learn. When her son was 3 years old, he attended a new preschool run by the Seattle Jewish Community Center that offered classes that fit the needs of her children. Ultimately, all three of Daniels’ children attended SJCC. As a layperson and member of SJCC during those years, Daniels became the parent chair of a newly formed committee: The Early Childhood Services of the SJCC.
Her journey in the ’60s would next lead her to The Little School, a newly established institution that offered a natural setting to nurture children’s curiosity and potential. Her eldest son began attending kindergarten there, and it was during this time that Dr. Daniels began reading more about early childhood education—continuing a journey that would last a lifetime.
During the ’70s, Daniels returned to the University of Washington to complete the B.A. in Education and teaching certification for preschool through grade 12 that she had begun before her marriage and the births of her children. After noticing how involved Daniels had become with the school, the founder-director of The Little School, Eleanor Siegl, gave permission for Daniels to spend her student teaching in preschool at The Little School.
Upon receiving her B.A., Daniels returned to the SJCC preschool to teach children ages 2-5. In the ’80s, she became the early childhood director for the SJCC and began the process of deciding where to apply for her graduate education. She was already familiar with Pacific Oaks through its relationship with the teacher education program at The Little School. In a 2014 interview for the Washington State Jewish Archives Committee, Daniels recalled how Pacific Oaks’ commitment to confronting real-world issues and talking about social change led her to choose the Human Development program for her master’s studies.
Once in the Human Development master’s program at Pacific Oaks, Daniels found fresh support for the passion and mission she’d been cultivating through meaningful connections with the kindred spirits around her.
“I liked the attitude of the faculty members. They were not materialistic, and I once heard a group of them saying, ‘You just need enough,’” Daniels recalls. “People appreciated the outdoors, noticed flowers, insects, birds, and small animals. The other students seemed similarly interested in walking outside, sitting on floors, and making other people’s lives better.”
Additionally, Daniels was introduced to progressive ideas from new perspectives during her Pacific Oaks studies.
“I was exposed to material that I had missed growing up about the inequities other people suffered,” she says. “We discussed racism, sexism, homophobia, and much more. I hadn’t thought a lot about classism before my PO experience, nor did I recognize my white privilege until a long time after I graduated.”
Her focus on human development further enriched her experience by heightening the importance of learning through listening and empathy.
“Human development says that you’re learning all your life, and you’ve learned a lot from your experience,” she says. “There’s no person that we can’t learn something from. In fact, it’s from the one that is most different from you that you learn the most.”
The meaningful lessons Daniels took from her time as a student at Pacific Oaks carried on when, a few years after earning her master’s degree, she returned to work as a faculty member at Pacific Oaks. She used her passion for social justice to help launch the Women of Color cohort, which secured funding to offset students’ tuition costs. All 14 people graduated from the first cohort, and a second cohort followed. In all, approximately 30 people graduated from the cohorts with her support. Daniels also has transitioned her efforts to support minority businesses in Seattle. Her lessons from Pacific Oaks stay with her to this day.
Now retired, Daniels continues to be inspired by Black Lives Matter, other social justice movements, and her lessons from Pacific Oaks. She recently worked with Tilman Smith, a fellow alum and former program assistant and instructor at Pacific Oaks, to create a discussion group program at her residence home about culture, dialogue, and differences.
Daniels credits her time at Pacific Oaks as a driving force behind her efforts.
“If my classes at Pacific Oaks hadn’t sparked my enthusiasm and driven me to continue gathering understanding on my own outside the classroom, I wouldn’t be designing such a group activity today,” she states.
Even now, helping others remains an issue close to Daniels’ heart.
“When you finally ‘get it’ about something that causes others not to have a good life, you can never forget it. Such knowledge changes you and never goes away,” she says. “I’m still learning about my own attitudes and behavior, even now at age 83. For me, the culture of Pacific Oaks was about recognizing inequities and working to overcome them.”
