When children are little, their first teachers are their parents.
But when it comes time for preschool, not every young child is enrolled. Sometimes, if they haven’t been trained, parents and caregivers don’t know how to implement playtime, socialization, reading time and developmental learning.
The Baton Rouge Early Childhood Education Collaborative is here to help parents by providing home-based early childhood education and support for families and caregivers of underserved preschool-aged children.
Early learning specialist with children and family at a STEAM It Up Saturday.
“We are about kindergarten readiness, but we are really about school readiness,” said Cathy Griffin, an education consultant with the collaborative. “We want to tap into children’s curiosity that they’re born with.”
In 2021, Louisiana Policy Institute for Children conducted research that found the state of Louisiana serves only 29% of in-need children four and under in all publicly funded early care and education programs including Early Head Start, Head Start and state-administered programs such as the Child Care Assistance Program. Because kindergarten is mandatory by law in Louisiana for children who are 5 years old by Sept. 30, many do not meet the benchmarks for school readiness by that age.
For early childhood education to succeed in Louisiana, BRECEC executive director Patricia Haynes-Smith says that the state needs donor money for those individuals who are not receiving state money.
‘They weren’t ready for school’
In 2018, BRECEC’s current chief operating officer, Dan Chavis, met with community members to discuss ways to help reach underserved children below the age of five. The collaborative was formed the next year, and by 2020, the organization had its 501(c)(3) status.
From right to left: Shelia Chavis, Dan Chavis, Cathy Griffin and Pat Smith stand with donated items.
In March of 2021, BRECEC established the HomeStart Early Childhood Education and Wellness program to cater to families with children who aren’t enrolled in learning centers or Head Start programs. Over 255 families with 367 children have been enrolled in the program since its inception.
Sonny Cranch, a retired public relations and advertising executive, volunteers with HomeStart and has been an advocate of BRECEC since the beginning.
“In homes where there was not access to nor could the caregivers afford day care, the children would show up at the schoolhouse door, and they weren’t ready for school,” Cranch said. “They didn’t know the numbers. They didn’t know the alphabet, didn’t know their colors. BRECEC realized that those very children were the ones that, as they progressed through school, become more and more frustrated.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation was the first source of funding for HomeStart in 2021. Other donors like the Louisiana Department of Health Bureau of Minority Health Access, East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority, Wilson Foundation, Louis Calder Foundation, East Baton Rouge Parish School System and Charles Lamar Family Foundation were other donors that helped get the program off the ground.
The HomeStart program employs three early learning specialists who use the evidence and play-based curriculum, ParentChild+, as well as Louisiana Believes early childhood education standards to teach children directly and train parents and caregivers to implement early childhood learning strategies. The specialists visit the families twice a week for 48 weeks.
HomeStart in Baton Rouge is the only ParentChild+ site in the Deep South. Started in New York in 1979, ParentChild+ was the product of several years of Dr. Phyllis Levenstein’s research and pilot program, the Verbal Interaction Project and the Mother-Child Home Program, which approached reaching children and their parents at home, before they even entered school.
Early learning specialist plays with blocks and shapes with HomeStart participants.
The value of early childhood education
The Louisiana Policy Institute for Children found that only 30% of Louisiana children arrive at kindergarten meeting critical benchmarks. Early care and education programs prepare children to enter kindergarten ready to succeed, which reduces the likelihood of academic struggles later on.
When children begin school behind, they generally remain behind. However, studies show that when children can read proficiently by third grade, they are more likely to achieve academic success, graduate from high school and do well when they enter the workforce, Chavis said.
“Young children feel failure, and they feel it very strongly,” Griffin said. “If you start in a cycle of failure, you go into every activity and every teacher feeling like you’re going to fail. When you work with children, one-on-one or in small groups, they begin to experience success.”
Education consultant Cathy Griffin reads to children in the HomeStart program during a STEAM It Up Saturday.
During each HomeStart visit, the early learning specialists give the parent or caregiver a free book or an educational toy and guide sheet that’s focused on school readiness skills. The specialists meet with families and home-based child care providers with up to six children under 5 years old. They model playing with the developmental toys and reading the appropriate books to the children so parents and caregivers can continue the early learning at home.
“The parents see the joy in doing that and what their children are learning. They’re filling their house with good toys and good books,” Griffin said.
Shelia Chavis, the BRECEC education director, says the collaborative wants to empower parents and caregivers through HomeStart strategies that are needed for school readiness.
Expanding with literacy and S.T.E.A.M.
After the Parent Child+ curriculum is finished, the HomeStart early learning specialists introduce the Reading Out Loud Everyday program as a part of the literacy initiative. The program provides parents with reading strategies to help their children develop language skills, vocabulary, comprehension and imagination.
“One of the statistics that’s always stood out to me is that the highest indicator of school success is children being read to on the laps of a trusted adult,” Griffin said. “We’re helping them to do that. To see a child snuggle up and be read to, they just soak it up. I think literacy is key, just as parents being involved is key.”
Another expansion to HomeStart is a science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics component that helps promote critical thinking, experimentation and creativity.
STEAM It Up Saturdays at Carver Library provides a learning environment for the HomeStart families. Griffin prepares experiments and activities for the children, and she shows families how to gather loose parts and scavenged materials like boxes and bottle caps to do the activities at home.
“Everybody needs to get involved in better childhood education,” Dan Chavis said. “That’s why we use the word collaborative with our name. We want everybody to get involved. We don’t want to take all the credit. We just want to be a resource for the community; we can support the efforts of the parents.”
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