Family-Focused Preschool Tiny Elma School District offers birth-to-kindergarten services in hopes of starting families on an education-first course.
Story and photo by MELISSA STEINEGER
ive-year-old Tasha Erickson's blond ponytail swings side-to-side as she bounces resolutely to the bulletin board and points to the list of the day's activities. "It's not time to play," she announces sternly. "It's time to go outside."
Tasha, a serious tyke in a Barney T-shirt, is a two-year veteran of the developmentally focused preschool offered by the Elma School District. She knows how to check and interpret the day's posted schedule, which consists of drawings of each activity along with a written label.
"You're right," says teacher Tarrie Bracey in a voice brimming with affirmation. "But today we finished a little early so we're waiting just a few minutes to go outside. Thank you for knowing our schedule."
Tasha's eyes glow and the corners of her mouth lift slightly. Satisfied, the youngster plunges into the tumble of three-, four-, and five-year-olds busily assembling blocks.
The Elma School District serves 2,100 students in three buildings nestled at the foot of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. For more than a decade, Elma has offered a birth-to-kindergarten program for youngsters who are identified as developmentally delayed—defined as anything from speech disorders to Down syndrome. About five years ago, when many schools began integrating developmentally delayed children into mainstream classrooms, Elma did likewise. That meant opening the birth-to-kindergarten program to all children.
Preschool class sizes range from 10 to 14 children, and teachers are assisted by a classroom aide with early childhood education training. The program's three teachers hold endorsements in early childhood education and are members of the bargaining unit that represents teachers in the Elma School District. Parent volunteers also are common in preschool classrooms and this year the district finished a 3,300 square-foot building designed especially and exclusively for preschoolers.
Family focus is the mantra of the birth-to-kindergarten program. Services are free to families who meet state low-income guidelines and to developmentally delayed youngsters; others pay up to $40 a month on a sliding scale. Elma's program can serve about 100 youngsters, a fourth to a third of whom are developmentally delayed. (At any time, another 20 or so children are on a waiting list.) Children come one to four times a week depending on their ages. On Fridays, teachers make home visits.
Ostensibly, home visits are to describe a child's progress, exchange ideas, and discuss concerns. But teachers also act as a source of information and provide referrals to social service agencies.
Dr. Carole Cropley, a teacher in the preschool program, says that families in distress often find it difficult to give their child's education the attention it needs. "Until families have food and shelter covered," she says, "how can they think about education? We often get to my agenda faster if we get to their agenda first."
Home visits also help form a crucial bond between family and school. "Parents may have unpleasant memories of their own school experiences," says teacher Linda Ferguson. "Our home visits build a relationship that may have benefits now, in kindergarten, in fourth grade, in middle school—maybe forever."
The family-school bond is further strengthened by encouraging parents to volunteer in the classroom and to visit often. Youngsters take home a monthly calendar of events and a newsletter that features notes about classroom activities along with general parenting information. Parents also meet with teachers at the school for conferences and for "family socials," gatherings to allow families to exchange experiences, sample preschool activities, and learn parenting tips.
Carolyn Wescott, a mother of four children younger than six, has a son in his second year at the Elma preschool. "I brought Jenner in for a screening when he was three because he wasn't talking yet—I thought he might have a hearing problem," Wescott says. "The teacher who screened him was wonderful. She took all kinds of time to find out what was going on." Jenner joined the preschool in midyear. After several months in school, along with other changes at home, he has been transformed into an outgoing, talkative child.
"I think the preschool is wonderful and I especially enjoy the home visits," says Wescott. "I get to 'interrogate'—I mean that in a nice way—the teacher. I get her professional input on my mothering—how I can do things better, what she thinks about things I'm reading. I really enjoy my one-to-one time with her. I'd feel lost if she didn't come out."
Effects of the inclusive preschool are rippling through Elma's single elementary school. Leslie Wheeler, a teacher for 15 years, served in the preschool program before becoming a teacher in a blended classroom. (In Elma, an elementary teacher teaches the same group of youngsters for first and second grade, further strengthening the child's bond with school and the family's bond with Elma.)
As the first batch of integrated preschool "graduates" entered elementary school, Wheeler recalls, they were bored. Accustomed to a hands-on curriculum that emphasized multiple activity stations keyed to their developmental stages, the youngsters were not content, as Wheeler puts it, to color dittos.
The district responded by providing teacher training in High/ Scope, a child-centered curriculum emphasizing developmentally appropriate, hands-on learning. Formerly available for only the preschool level, High/Scope has recently expanded its strategies and concepts through third grade.
Where preschoolers may learn sorting skills at an activity center—a table with blocks and other resources appropriate for learning the skill—older children have activity centers for reading, writing, art, math, computers, and science. They learn to "plan, do, and review" their learning process themselves, with support from the teacher. At the writing center, a high-capability child might write a six-page story while a developmentally delayed child draws the alphabet. Both are working to their maximum potential instead of an artificial average that doesn't challenge the more advanced youngster and unfairly frustrates the child at the other end of the spectrum.
The voluntary High/Scope curriculum training for teachers through second grade is proving successful, says Kathy Budge, Director of Instruction, because teachers see that the concepts work. "Things that teachers and community say are important—problem solving, reasoning, the ability to 'plan-do-review'—these are the things that have been part of a high-quality preschool curriculum," she says. "Now we're moving those things up the curriculum to older children."
In an era of continual reductions in state and federal dollars, one might well ask why Elma does it—and how. Finding money to pay for nonmandatory programs is increasingly difficult. Elma pays for its variety of birth-to-kindergarten services with a creative combination of federal and state dollars and tuition charges. Of a total program cost of about $212,000, a federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant covers about $23,000, state dollars earmarked for children with special needs another $166,000, state Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program funds add $12,500, and tuition contributes $10,500.
Nell Ellingsen, Director of Special Services, oversees the district's early childhood program. Ellingsen believes that educating community members is crucial for a successful program. Residents, she says, need to know the research concerning preschool education and its effect on the lifelong school career of youngsters; they need to know about the needs of families and children in their district for affordable, high-quality early childhood education; and they need to understand how a strong bond with the school, established early, affects the lifelong education of the child.
"As educators," Ellingsen says, "we have to educate our communities on the importance of early childhood education. We believe in the power of connecting families to resources—parents bonding with children and parents believing that they are the greatest educators their children will ever have. This is our mission. Although it does take more effort to find the dollars to support the program, we could not allow a lack of funds to be our rationale for dropping it."
Linda Fitzgerald, a lifelong community resident and school board member since 1990, works with families of at-risk adolescents. "It's clear that the earlier the intervention with families who have risk factors—the sooner you get them accessing the resources available to them—the more successful they are," she says. "A lot of families don't know what resources are available. They need an advocate who can help them access the services that will help them be successful. The preschool teacher is that advocate. The teacher helps empower the family, and that helps them succeed. When I'm out in the community, parents often tell me what a wonderful program it is."
While quantifiable measurements of the program's success have not been undertaken, teachers and parents have no doubt of its benefits. Anecdotal results include:
- Teachers report that parents uniformly say their children have reached the individual goals set at the beginning of each year by teachers and parents.
- Families build sometimes surprising relationships with the school. One mother recently confided that she used to become physically ill when she had to visit the school. After two years of experience with the home visits and family focus of Elma's program, however, she returned to school herself and earned a teaching certificate.
- Elementary teachers say that youngsters from the preschool are ahead of their peers in basic school abilities—like little Tasha who knows the day's schedule and how to keep to it.
"We offer preschool because we know it can make a difference for children," Ellingsen says. "Research substantiates that the greatest difference we can make for a child is in the developmental years."
Getting children started early can set them on a path of lifelong learning, she adds. "If we don't permit our children to learn at the earliest possible time, we won't be able to do what we're required to do at a later age," Ellingsen says. "The fact that as a district you're losing federal and state money can't be an excuse. If I ever doubted that, all I would need to do is just visit the preschool classroom and watch those children becoming excited about learning."
Resource notes: Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children, and Years of Promise: A Comprehensive Learning Strategy for America's Children, are both available from the Carnegie Corporation, (212) 207-6285. For information on High/Scope curriculum resources, call (313) 485-2000.
Melissa Steineger is a freelance writer living in Portland, Oregon.
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