The Big Stories Project

Georgina Ardalan is an early childhood educator at Janney Elementary, a District of Columbia Public School, who draws on inspiration from her first career in architecture to create a nurturing and collaborative environment within a thinking culture where teachers and children both question and listen. During the school year she serves as a facilitator for Harvard University's Graduate School of Education’s online courses “Let’s Play” and “Look, Listen, Interpret, Teach.” She serves on the faculty of national institutes including Washington International School Institute for Teachers (WISIT), Project Zero Classroom (PZC), and the Cultures of Thinking Summit. She has presented at national and international conferences on her work with Children Are Citizens. She has published articles in Young Children, a National Association for the Education of Young Children publication; International Perspectives on Educating for Democracy in Early Childhood: Recognizing Young Children as Citizens, edited by Stacy DeZutter and published by Routledge; and most recently in NCTE's Classroom Corridors, issue 11, "Art Invites Us In." She holds a BA from George Washington University and three master's degrees in design-related fields from Parsons School of Design and the University of Miami. Georgina and her family live on Capitol Hill, where she is often found on the pickleball court, cheering on her son at a soccer game, or simply walking around our amazing city.

Jaime Chao Mignano is the director of technology and innovation at the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland, an all-girls K–12 independent school. In this role, she builds a schoolwide culture of enthusiastic maker-centered learning and purpose-driven innovation in the service of peace and justice. For over a decade in the Washington, DC, area she has managed makerspace and academic technology programs at public, independent, and charter schools. Jaime’s diverse classroom applications of Project Zero (PZ) ideas have grown her practice and leadership at the intersection of technology and justice education. She has presented PZ-inspired workshops at conferences such as the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Conference, the NAIS People of Color Conference, the International Coalition of Girls Schools Symposium, the Project Zero Perspectives conference, and Washington International School Institute for Teachers (WISIT).

Jaime has been a member of the DC-based leadership team for the PZ research projects Making Across the Curriculum and JusticexDesign. She has coauthored practitioner field notes and lesson plans published by Agency by Design, JusticexDesign, and Enslaved.org, as well as the chapter “JusticexDesign: Exploring Power, Representation, and Participation through Maker-Centered Learning” in the Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education (2021). Jaime holds BAs in international relations in public policy and East Asian languages and cultures from Michigan State University, as well as an MA in technology in education from the University of Michigan. Jaime is a mom of two teens and an avid gardener with a backyard flock of hens.