LIVE UNITED Y’All!

By Natalie Harris

I came across this article,  The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers, by David Leonhardt, in the New York Times business section this morning, and with all the buzz about our recent Kindergarten Countdown event at Slugger Field, I thought the timing was too good to be ignored.

While the article is a bit of an opinion piece (ultimately treading into some potential education policy minefields), I thought the greater point of the study discussed was clearly worth mentioning:  kindergarten, when done well, has an incredible long-term impact.  As Leonhardt sums up:

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

An that “more” is nothing to sneeze at:

A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average.

The study discussed, “How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earings? Evidence From Project STAR”, ultimately concludes that an outstanding kindergarten teacher is worth $320,000 a year.

This could definitely be viewed as depressing news in these days of budget cuts, school closings (i.e. bigger classrooms), and big challenges for even the best teachers — the ultimate toll all this can take on the community is alarming — but it should also be viewed as a call to action.

The work Metro United Way does in support of early childhood education (Success By 6, Gheens Bridges to Tomorrow, Born Learning and more) pushes us towards one goal:  making sure that our children arrive in kindergarten ready to succeed.  This moment of economic crisis makes it even more imperative that we do the work, with our community’s help, to meet this goal.

Education, Events, General early childhood, kindergarten, Kindergarten Countdown, Metro United Way, Success By 6

by Natalie Harris

Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid - click for link

Oh, the iPhone.  In my house, it made an appearance just a few months ago.

Boy. has it ever.

My husband really can justify having one (he runs his own business, has no assistant, and is out visiting sites all over the city throughout the day),  but as his attachment to this lovely little device grows and grows, so does my level of frustration.

“But look at all that it helps me do!” he says.  He can send e-mail while at a jobsite!  He can get directions!  He can check prices!  He can take photos!  He can miss conversations!  He can forget to talk to our toddler!  He can help our teenager tune out even more by handing it to him at family functions!

Harrumph.

So when I came across this New York Times article yesterday, The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In, did I ever get excited.  Proof!  Validation of my recent tirades in black and white!  Sudden reason to examine my commitment to my laptop!  Wait — uh-oh.

As I overheard a friend of mine saying last night, “It’s hard being married to a righteous man.”  Ouch.  Turns out I’m the righteous one in the family, and the problem with all that righteousness is that you start to become blind to your own flaws;  I am just as guilty of distraction by way of e-mail, facebook, or, irony of ironies, The New York Times website.

I know that in this world where everyone –work, family and friends – expects us to be accessible all the time that it’s incredibly difficult to turn off all that distraction.  But as the article above points out, this constant need to stay connected electronically gets in the way of the meaningful connections in our lives, especially with our children.

Young children, in particular, need that connection to us.  They need it to develop language skills, to build their social skills, and to simply engage and learn about the world around them.  When we’re tuned into the smartphone at the playground, or even at the grocery store, we’re missing critical opportunities for learning.

As part of our Success By 6 work, one of the major initiatives here at Metro United Way, we’ve connected to a nationwide program called Born Learning.  Born Learning promotes using everyday life as a learning opportunity, and offers lots of guidance and suggestions on how to make it happen.  For many of us, this may seem intuitive, but I know I could definitely use a refresher, and to remember to turn off the computer between the hours of 5:00pm-9:00pm ( AND to hide that iPhone).

Education, General Children, early childhood, Education, parenting, reading, Success By 6, youth

By Angie Ditsler

I’m sitting here at my desk reflecting back over the last few weeks about interesting people I’ve met or conversations I’ve had. Sure, I’ve had a lot of conversations with coworkers and volunteers about work-related matters and big projects coming up.  I’ve also spent plenty of time talking to my husband and friends about the recent primary elections and our impending vacation coming up in a couple days. However, the most memorable conversations I’ve had in recent weeks have been with my 22-month-old nephew Jack.

Now don’t get me wrong; talking to Jack isn’t quite the same as talking to Warren Buffet, but in a lot of ways Jack makes me think and laugh just as hard. I usually don’t make it up to Cincinnati more than once a month to visit him so I treasure the time we get to spend together. When I last saw him on April 14, Jack was talking a mile a minute although I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. This time, when I went to wake him up from his nap on Saturday and asked him if he knew who was waiting downstairs to see him, he not only listed every relative in three generations and our pets, but he also raised his little eyebrows and looked me square in the eyes and said, “I throw the ball?” (It actually sounded more like, “I fro da ba?”) I immediately knew Jack was referring to our dog Dubs whom he loves to play fetch with when we come to visit.

I was stunned! I understood every word he said. Not only that, but I couldn’t believe he was putting three and four words together to form phrases and sentences already. In just a few short weeks, Jack had expanded his vocabulary by at least a dozen words and was actually able to carry on brief conversations- of course, they were about things like doggies, bath time, and his baby sister Cece. Still, it was the first time I had to pause and think, “Wow, the Little Man is really growing up.”

Watching Jack grow has been the most exciting thing to happen in my life so far. It’s amazing to see how much he’s learning and how quickly he’s changing every time I see him. Jack is a daily reminder of how important the first six years of a child’s life truly are. He’s a vacuum to the words, behaviors (and, yes, even dance moves) that are modeled around him. Every sound, sight, touch and taste is a learning experience for Jack- and it’s an absolute delight watching him learn.

For more information about the importance of early childhood visit www.metrounitedway.org/successby6.

Education early childhood, early childhood education, early learning, Success By 6

By Mary Sullivan

What do wide eyes and laughter have in common?  Let me go a little further in my explanation. Recently 240 students from Holy Cross High School spent the day volunteering. Two of the sites I visited were Iroquois Child Care Center and California Area Family Development Center. I heard laughter from both children and students as they were bouncing balls up into the air. Children were wrapped around the legs of these students, and in another room three little girls wanted to show their dolls to one of the boys.

Today, we often read or hear about how young people aren’t engaged, but in one day Holy Cross students volunteered at nine different organizations, provided 1320 service hours, and gave back $27,522.00 of in-kind service to our community. Holy Cross High School certainly isn’t the only school that does volunteer work. So far this school year, Metro United Way has coordinated volunteer projects for Barret Middle School, Moore Middle School, Spalding University, Bellarmine University, IUS and U of L.

Metro United Way has been supportive of youth volunteering for many years, and for 22 years, Metro United Way has recognized a high school senior for their volunteer effort by awarding a $3,000 scholarship.  In fact, Volunteer Engagement Center origins began from a partnership with U of L School of Recreation, the Junior League of Louisville and Metro United Way (Community Chest). Since the 1930’s until today, helping youth map out their career choices or exploring interests through volunteering has always been part of what we do. So if you a student or a group looking to do something this summer, need to do community service hours for school or your faith based organization, want to meet interesting people, or just have fun, please contact the Volunteer Engagement Center’s website at metrounitedway.org/volunteer.

Education, Volunteering community change, early childhood, future, making a difference, Metro United Way, scholarship, youth

By: Angie Ditsler

Last week I had the most amazing volunteer experience.  One of my most favorite Success By 6 volunteers asked me to return the favor and volunteer for a project she was working on in Shelby County.  When I first agreed to be a guest judge for the Shelby County Teacher of the Year Award I assumed that meant I’d be reading over nomination forms and scoring them.  But how well can you really judge someone’s teaching ability and impact on his or her students from reading an application?  My question was answered as soon as I received my judging packet in the mail, and saw that I’d be spending the day observing teachers in action and interviewing them individually about their jobs.  I couldn’t wait!

When I arrived at the Central Office that morning I met the other guest judges, a reporter for the Sentinel News and a school administrator in the Henry County school system.  Together, we read over the bios of the teachers we would be meeting later and then headed off to our first school.

I was absolutely blown away by what I observed that morning at Heritage and Simpsonville Elementary Schools.  It has been years since I stepped foot in fifth grade and kindergarten classrooms.  In some ways, my mind was immediately taken back to my days spent sitting in a beanbag chair in the “reader’s corner” in Mrs. Waggener’s classroom devouring novels as she played soft music in the background.  In other ways, I couldn’t help but think, “Where in the world am I?!”  There were no chalkboards in sight- instead the teachers wrote with their pointers on “smart boards” and erased the board with the click of a button.  I also noticed that neither classroom had a teacher’s desk.  My fellow judge explained to me that these schools practice what is known as “child-centered classrooms,” meaning the teachers are immersed in working alongside their students rather than lecturing from the front of a room.  I couldn’t help but feel “behind the times” as I looked around the rooms and watched these teachers work their magic on the students. 

When it was time for the interview portion of the day, I found myself straying from the scripted questions and asking the teachers about every detail of their days.  I was just so fascinated by everything I heard!  But what I marveled at the most were the teachers’ responses when I asked them why they continue to do this job after 10, 20, and even 30 years.  All responded, “It’s the kids.”  It was apparent to me that these were people living their passion.  I definitely gained more from this volunteer experience than I gave.  I walked away feeling inspired, motivated, and even more energized to pursue my passions, too.

Education, Giving, Volunteering early childhood, living your passion, Shelby County, Success By 6

By Sommer Lally

The first day of Spring is tomorrow and I don’t know about you but, for me, it can’t get here soon enough!  Maybe it has something to do with my name but I hate cold weather like a cat hates water so, the arrival of Spring is always something I look forward to.  But this year I am especially excited.  You see, I bought my first house last fall and I’ve not yet been able to enjoy basking in the sunshine in my new yard. 

My husband and I already purchased and assembled (okay, okay, he assembled) a grill and have plans in the works for patio furniture.  Even better, I’ve talked him into making improvements to our landscaping.  As you can see, right now the landscaping leaves (no pun intended) a little to be desired.

I’m thinking some nice evergreen shrubs and some leafy bushes might do the trick.  There’s just one little catch.  As I’ve been reading up on landscaping tips, it has become clear – much to my chagrin – that we won’t reap the benefits immediately.  It will take years for the shrubs and bushes we plant this spring to grow and mature into the beautiful landscape of my dreams.  Slowly but surely, it will get there.  I just have to be patient, which is not my strong suit.

When I think about it, landscaping is kind of like the work around community change that we’re doing here at Metro United Way.  Community change doesn’t happen over night, it takes years to see the results of the work you’re putting in today.  But you better believe when 2018 rolls around and all of the children in our community are prepared to enter kindergarten and half as many high students are dropping out, we will know that our efforts were worth it.

What about those of us who need to see the immediate results?  I would put myself into this category which is where the grill and patio furniture come in.  They’ll allow me to enjoy my yard immediately, albeit in a different way.  The same is true for our focus on basic needs here at Metro United Way.  Our investments in early childhood education and drop-out prevention will pay-off in the future while those in basic needs help the community right now. 

It helps me to think of our work in this way.  How do you think of Metro United Way’s work?  What helps you to better understand and communicate to others what we do?

Education, General Children, community change, early childhood, making a difference, Metro United Way

If there is one thing that working with Success By 6 has confirmed for me it is to instill a love of reading in my child. We read everyday at our house. In fact, Luke has made up a new game to play called “naptime.” He tells his dad and me to “go take your nap.” He tucks us into his bed, reads us a story, gives us our kisses, says goodnight and closes the door to his room. My husband actually finds this to be a very cruel game, because just as we are feeling nice and relaxed, Luke will burst into the room, turn on the lights and loudly say, “Time to wake up!” My favorite part of naptime is when Luke reads our bedtime story. He usually chooses one of his favorite books. So, he knows most of the words or uses the pictures to make up what is happening in the story. I think that it is very cool that reading a story has to be a part of “naptime.”

Luke has many favorite books, including the Clifford the Big Red Dog series. One of the reasons that he loves Clifford books so much is that there are pictures of the covers of other Clifford books on the back of each book. He likes to go through all of the pictures and find the pictures of the books that he has in his collection. Sometimes, this can lead to reading six books in a row, but I don’t mind. My bigger issue is that I can’t walk into a book store without checking out which Clifford books they have. I am constantly trying to find as many of the books featured on the back of the covers that I can. In fact, this morning I ordered a set of six Clifford books– three that we already have – from the Scholastic book order that came home from school just so I could add to Luke’s Clifford collection.

As I placed my order this morning, I thought about all of the children who do not have fifteen Clifford books in their collections or entire bookcases full of beautiful children’s books. It made me sad. But I couldn’t be sad for too long because my next thought was of the boxes and boxes of books that we just received from the Borders book drive.

This summer, for the third year in a row, Borders provided its customers with the opportunity to give a book to a young child who may not otherwise have one. And again this year, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of our community.  When I spoke with my Borders contacts about halfway through the drive they told me that it seemed like the donations were going to be down this year because of the economy. We have not yet sorted and counted the books to know for sure how many books there are, but by the looks of the boxes stacked in our basement, our community once again showed its caring power and gave even if it hurt. There will be hundreds and hundreds of small children who will receive a book to take home. I wonder if any of them will tell their mommies and daddies that it is time for a nap, read them a book and put them to bed.

Education, Giving Borders, early childhood, reading, Success By 6

Success By 6 offers parent workshops in partnership with a few local hospitals. This effort recently expanded to include monthly workshops at Norton Suburban. I decided to attend the first workshop to make sure everything ran smoothly and because I was interested in the topic. Dr. Jeanette Nunnelley presented her workshop, “Powerful, Practical Practices in Behavior Guidance.” I generally think that I do a pretty good job in the positive discipline arena, but I thought that I should see how I compare to the advice of an expert.

I was pleased that so many of the strategies that she described were ones that I already use with Luke. Here are a few of them:

• Ignore inappropriate behavior and/or redirect. If what he’s doing isn’t going to hurt him and it is just annoying me I try to walk away. And if he is not making the best choice, it is easy to “trick” him into focusing his attention on something else.
• Catch your child being good. When he uses good manners or is sweet to another person I praise him and tell him how proud I am of the behavior I want to see more of.
• Use simple preventative measures. No one likes to be rushed. In our frantic family one of the most valuable strategies that we use is to give five minute warnings (followed by a countdown of minutes) when it is nearing time to move to our next activity.

Of course, I have had the opportunity to sit in on countless early childhood training sessions when I worked in the child care field, and I have real-life experience with lots of other people’s children who I have cared for. So, I should already know these techniques. The part that pleases me the most is that I almost always put them into practice. Don’t get me wrong, everyone loses their patience sometimes. I know that I have fussed at him in a less than appropriate way on at least a couple of occasions.

I can think of one bedtime in particular. We had gotten all set: all clean from bath, pajamas on, lots of books thrown into the bed waiting to be read, and goodnight kisses for Daddy. In my mind we were all set for a typical bedtime. Apparently Luke had other things in mind. He kept getting out of bed to go get stuff telling me, “I be right back.” He would come back, get back into bed, think of something else and jump out of the bed again. I probably ignored this behavior for a little too long because I finally had enough and told him in a raised voice that if he didn’t get into that bed then we weren’t reading any books at all and I was leaving the room. My overly-sensitive child cried. He hung his head and wouldn’t look at me. He finally said, “I’m mad.” I felt bad about hurting his feelings, but I was impressed with his ability to name his feeling. We snuggled and read books after that, but it still wasn’t an exchange that I felt good about.

The biggest take-away for me from Dr. Nunnelley’s workshop was her reminder to be an appropriate role model for your child. This is actually something that I am trying to be intentional about in everything that I do: Be the change that you want to see. So, of course it makes sense for me to be the kind of person that I want my son to be.

What works with your child?  When have you been frustrated?

photo credit:  brungrrl

Education Children, early childhood, parent workshops, parenting, Success By 6

Sing, Dance, Play. This is one of the key messages of the Success By 6 Born Learning campaign, and is something we practice with great passion in my home. Like most young children, Luke loves music. And why wouldn’t he? His daddy is a musician, and his mommy…well, mommy loves to sing it and shake it on the dance floor with Luke to the smooth sounds of Children’s Programming on KET.

We do our fair share of the classic children’s songs: “The Wheels on the Bus,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” etc. Honestly, is there anything cuter than chubby little sausage fingers acting out the spider climbing up the waterspout or twinkling like a star? Of course there isn’t!

Our absolute favorite family sing, dance and play activity is a full-on jam session. Like a producer or record executive, Luke controls who gets what instrument, who sits where, what the arrangement should sound like, and when we get breaks. Daddy gets the “big guitar,” which is only fitting since daddy has had that guitar since he was all of 12 years old. Luke mans the small guitar and child-sized microphone. Mommy, reduced to a groupie, plays the triangle or tambourine. Producers know where the talent lies.

Then we jam. Daddy knows Luke wants to play The Grateful Dead’s “Bertha” first, a good bouncy tune to “warm up,” so we start with that and move into other genres and styles as the jam progresses.  Luke strums his guitar, sings with the chorus, and dances around like a miniature rock star. He will often remind the rest of us that he is indeed a rock star, shouting “Rock Star!” in the middle of a verse with no provocation, no request to do so. He just wants it known that it is so. When the song comes to an end, Luke will take a bow and say “thank you!” as if he has proudly satisfied the rock needs of thousand of fans at Madison Square Garden on New Years’ Eve. And like some concerts, this can go on for hours. Like a little Jackson Browne, Luke just wants to play a little bit longer.

Sing, Dance, Play. These are the joys of being a parent. It is imperative to share these moments with young children, and a great way to let go of stress in our adult lives.

Are you a parent? Is your child a “Rock Star?” Do you sing, dance and play? I’d love to hear about what you do at your home. Maybe we’ll use it in our next concert.

Education, General Born Learning, early childhood, Success By 6, young children

What can we do to better support parents as they embark on the tough journey of raising children?  As our economic conditions put more immediate pressure on families, what are we doing to make sure parents are able to support their child’s future?

These are the types of questions that have come up for me lately in my work in Success By 6.  I have also starting reading a couple of early childhood blogs that converged on this topic last week.  Christina writes a blog aimed at the parents of her kindergarten students to engage them in what goes on in her classroom (her interest is using tech in the classroom is very cool).  There was a link on this early childhood blog to a story about the anxieties British children face as a consequence of their parents’ stress.

These connections reinforce the idea that our community needs to do more to support and encourage parents.  How can we make it easier for teachers and caregivers to talk with parents about what happens with their child during the day?  How do make sure that the stresses facing our adults don’t affect our children’s mental health?

Are you a parent?  What support do you need?  What can groups like Metro United Way Success By 6 do?  How can we work together to ensure the success of our children?

Photo credit:  assbach

Education Community, early childhood, parenting, Success By 6