Dotsch, Daisy

Daisy Eileen Dotsch (1914-2013), born Daisy Eileen Whitehall, was a nursery school teacher and founder of the Vaughan Cooperative Nursery School in York Township (still operating today as Hippo Nursery School in Toronto). She was a pioneer in the cooperative preschool movement, which began in the Unites States as part of a broader Progressive education movement in the 1930s, but proliferated widely in North America, and some other parts of the world, in the decades following World War II. Cooperative preschools and nursery schools required parents to spend a certain amount of time working at the school as teachers and teachers’ assistants, partly as a way to reduce costs, but more importantly out of a belief that parental involvement in the education of their children was beneficial to children and parents alike. As part of this mission, cooperative nursery schools like Vaughan trained parents in early childhood education theories and practices.

Daisy Dotsch ran her first nursery school out of her own home at 8 Cherrywood Avenue in York Township between 1943 and 1947. In 1946, under the Ontario Daycare Act, the province began requiring licenses to operate nursery schools, and in 1947, York Township passed by-laws also requiring a license as well as banning nursery schools from residential areas. Refused a license by the Township, Dotsch was forced to close her home school, but she and some area mothers began a campaign to change the law. They gathered 500 signatures on a petition, and contributed to the ensuing public debate about nursery schools, defending them against critics who argued that small children belonged at home with their mothers and who dismissed the “child-centered” and “learning through play” pedagogical philosophy Dotsch and other teachers espoused at the time. The nursery school advocates won a change in the law in 1949, and Dotsch re-opened her school a year later as the Vaughan Road Nursery School (named after its new location at the International Order of Odd Fellows Hall, 94 Vaughan Road). The school was incorporated in 1951, and in 1969 moved to its current location, St. Matthews United Church at 279 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto, where it took the name Vaughan Cooperative Nursery School.

Dotsch studied at an elementary education program at London Normal School before marrying, and later took courses at the Institute for Child Studies in Toronto, earning a diploma in early childhood education in 1953. The Nursery Education Association of Ontario awarded her a diploma as a preschool teacher in 1966. Dotsch ran orientation programs for new parents at Vaughan School, taught ongoing workshops, and maintained a resource library for parents who wanted to learn more. From the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, Dotsch also taught courses in early childhood education and nursery school management, most frequently at Seneca College. Dotsch was also involved with local, national, and international cooperative nursery organizations, Including the Nursery Education Association of Ontario, the Toronto Council of Co-operative Nursery Schools, and Parent Co-operative Preschools International. Dotsch retired from teaching in 1972.

Daisy Dotsch was married to Nick Dotsch until his death in 1974. They had four children: Rose (Dotsch) Imeson, Richard Dotsch, Lee (Dotsch) Gravlev, and Julie Dotsch.

Sources: Obituary in the Toronto Star, 13 November, 2013, and A Patchwork of Memories: Celebrating the History of Vaughan Co-Op Nursery School (2004).