Printer-friendly versionThursday and Friday mornings, I have cafeteria duty at my elementary school. I always smile when our younger students come through the breakfast line. Their heads are at the level of the serving racks, so they have to hold their hands up to get their trays of food. I have to help them or we will have pancakes and syrup everywhere.
P is one of those kindergartners. He stands beside me in his colorful clothes with his bright smile. His voice is so quiet that I have to lean my ear close to him to hear him. He is one of the 15.5 million children in America who lives in poverty, and one of the 90 percent of children at my school who qualifies for free and reduced lunch.
As most teachers know, there is a risk of academic struggle that comes with economic poverty. While P's classmates learn in the classroom, his teacher has to call and ask why he is not in school. When he is at school, his teachers have to gently nudge him and say, "P, wake up—we're working on math." He has trouble writing his name.
I want to hand academic success to him like I hand him his breakfast tray, but it is not that easy. He is only 5 years old, and there is already a gap between his academic achievement and that of his peers. He already has to beat the odds to catch up.
The question for me is, "How do we help students like P?" We have a safety net at our school. We identified and placed him in our Response To Intervention reading program, so he has 30 minutes a day of intensive instruction in a small group with a reading specialist. We hope he will be able to read on grade level by the time he reaches third grade. But I wonder how could he have constructed the knowledge he needed to have a successful K-5 start before he came to us?
So I did some reading this week and came across an article by Marian Wright Edelman. She advocates for Head Start programs as a way to help children develop the skills they need for elementary school. Edelman’s piece, "From Head Start to Harvard," tells the story of Angelica Salazar, a young woman who believes Head Start put her on the path to Harvard and into a top position at the Children's Defense Fund. Salazar helps name and dismantle policies that trap millions of children from low-income homes in the school-to-prison pipeline each year.
After watching an interview with Salazar about the National Head Start Association, I was inspired to remember that Head Start can help children like P receive the educational, health, nutritional and social skills they need to get a successful start in school. Yet, the sad truth is that fewer than 3 percent of children eligible for Head Start actually enroll.
To bring the issues affecting young children to the forefront, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has sponsored “The Week of the Young Child.” This week is set aside to "focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to recognize the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs." The theme of the week is “Early Years are Learning Years.”
Ironically, Congress has recently debated cuts of more than $1 billion from Head Start programs. I encourage you to remember that early years are indeed learning years. Our focus should be on how we can make programs like Head Start stronger and more accessible to more children, especially those at-risk. With all of my heart, I hope one day to see P taking his lunch from the Harvard cafeteria and not from a prison plate. We need to advocate now for Head Start. We have to work together to help P make it in the cafeteria, in the classroom and in life.
Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.
Comments
A question: do the positive
A question: do the positive effects of Head Start come from it being a government program or do they come from what that federal program does? I know that seems like a distinction without a difference, but my point is that in the very hard economic situation that the United States finds itself in, the question of whether there is a way to provide the same effect through an alternative that costs less is very important. It falls back to the long-standing argument between the liberal and conservative ideologies about whether those who are succored by government-based assistance programs are more, or less, better off than when similar programs came from private charities and mutual-aid societies. Such arguments become more important when the government has become so gaunt from debt that there becomes a risk of it being crippled and rendered unable to perform even the most vital and basic functions. It seems to me that we are coming to the point where a limb can be sacrificed to save a life instead of endangering life on behalf of that limb, and those things that can technically be done without large concentrations of government resources are the limb sacrificed to save the government's life. So again we circle back to the question: given that Head Start is good and does good work, is it necessary for it to be the government's Head Start for the same good work to be done?
My own son is in head start.
My own son is in head start. I am a single working mom who puts in 12 hours of work a day and still struggles to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. One of the difficulties of having my son in school is transportation. When my work day goes from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm, getting him to the 3-hour preschool across town so he can get the education he needs is challenging. I have had to wear thin my financial, familial and community resources to get him to school every day. I am sure that many low-income families have the same struggles and this contributes to why more of them don't take advantage of the program. Working parents aren't available to drive their children and non-working parents don't have the transportation means.
As for the government's responsibility towards the program, I see it this way: If my son were to spend the day with his elderly grandpa rather than attending school, his social and educational needs would be so intense when he did start public school, that he would end up costing the school districts and thus the government more money just to get him to the level of his classmates. Head start pays off for the government by creating life-long learners from the start rather than having to spend the cost remediating these students later on.
As a former director, family
As a former director, family advocate, and head teacher of Head Start, I agree that some children did benefit greatly from the program. Unfortunately, from my personal experiences I observed a BUSINESS where filling out forms to receive more government funding seemed to be more important than the children. It is a wonderful idea to help at-risk, low income children, but there are many needy children left out and others who enjoyed the free babysitting at the expense of the taxpayers. More time was spent on forms than education and more staff worked in the offices than with the children. I believe it should be part of the public school system to help identify all the children who really need it.