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Preschoolers Ivan Kotch (left) and Joseph Mayr learn to count with help from instructional assistant Wenday Waters. Times-Courier Staff Photo/Ruth Marlow
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Early Childhood Education
Local
By Ruth Marlow
Source: Clarke Times-Courier
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20 2008
It’s not just the sensory-stimulating displays of colorful, large-scale alphabets and numbers amid rows of books, learning blocks and stuffed animals. Or the one-on-one attention and patient, gentle guidance given by the teachers and their assistants. Nor the enthusiastic participation by the county’s youngest students. It’s all of these characteristics and more that have earned the Clarke County school system’s early childhood education program praise from state officials and parents alike. Gov. Timothy Kaine’s Strong Start Council gives the program high marks, citing it as an innovative model for the commonwealth. The governor has made preschool opportunities for all 4-year-olds a priority initiative. In a recent report, council members, who last year visited Berryville Primary School to get a firsthand look, described the program as an “enriched (instructional experience) for preschoolers” that “allows for more individualized attention for students.” The program is unique, says Dr. Stephen Geyer, Berryville Primary School’s principal, because it serves preschoolers with a broad range of learning needs in a school-based setting, an advantage that allows them to become more quickly accustomed to the educational environment. Because the children get comfortable with the building, staff and school routine, Geyer explains, “It just helps make that transition into kindergarten that much more seamless for them. They feel like big kids because they’re in the big school." The program balances traditional academic preparation for kindergarten with play-based and social-based preschool activities, Geyer notes. Begun 15 years ago, it aims to give children ages 2 through 5 a jump-start for kindergarten and the school years to follow. Currently, two lead teachers and six instructional assistants teach 60 students in four classrooms on the school’s lower level. To ensure a small student-teacher ratio, groups of children consisting of six to eight each are rotated among what are known as “learning centers” in those classrooms where the teachers as well as the assistants provide direct instruction. “So they’re getting that small group and that individual attention,” Geyer emphasizes. Instruction focuses on literacy, science, math, history and social science, physical and motor development, and personal and social development, based on standards issued by the Virginia Department of Education. “ It’s really just as important to make sure that their academic skills are in place for success in kindergarten as much as their social and physical skills to make sure that they can do things like attend to a task, cooperate with others, comply with adults directions ... [and] to make sure that they are able to have a sense of their body and space and how they interact with other children,” Geyer says. Flexible scheduling offers students the opportunity to attend either a full day --seven hours -- or a partial day – three to five hours, Geyer notes. Tuition costs vary, with children deemed to need the program admitted free and those who do not need it but who are seen as ones who could serve as good role models charged according to the number of hours they attend, from $1,200 to $3,900. To qualify, children must go through a week-long screening process, which occurs each June. In addition, parents who have concerns about their children’s development can make appointments throughout the year for screening. Teachers and instructional assistants say they love being a part of the children’s learning experience. “I like this age; they’re always eager to learn; they always love everything new and exciting,” says Barbara Large, an instructional assistant whose daughter, Bryn, attends the program. “ She loves to talk about what she’s done; her favorite part is always art,” adds Large, who is taking courses to get a teaching degree. “Their enthusiasm for learning is really what keeps me going a lot of times,” says Kelye McKee, a lead teacher whose sons, Christopher and John, also went through the program. “When their little faces light up and they see something new.” That observation was reinforced during an exercise to identify and sort colors one afternoon last week when a student, asked by McKee about the color brown, asserted with certainty that it was “absent.” Each morning, teachers count who is present and who is absent, McKee explains, and the child associated the fact that there were no browns among his colors to count with the concept of being absent. “Those are the moments that I just think are so cute,” McKee says. “He was putting it all together and he had it figured out.” Reading to and spending quality time with children at these early ages is essential for parents, McKee adds. Contact the reporter at rmarlow@timespapers.com
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