Hayley Kirman - Children's Friend and Service

For my senior project, I worked at the Vincent A. Cianci Head Start Center run by Children's Friend and Service. I worked in a room with seventeen children ages three to five during the morning shift, which starts at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 12:00 noon. Each morning, the children have breakfast and brush their teeth at school. I found this interesting because it does not seem like something that is normally done at school. They then get time to look at books. Many of them asked me to read them books. By doing this, I found out that they do not have many books and the ones they do have are in bad condition. The children also get to go outside and play for somewhere between a half hour and an hour. They then go inside and have free play time, when they can choose to do art, science, or other activities for another hour until lunch.

The children eligible for this program are all in at-risk situations, so their families might have been involved in drug abuse or gangs, for example. Studies have shown that these programs actually help these children on their track to higher education, so although the kids are young, the program definitely has an effect on their lives.

I have noticed that the children enjoy us spending time with them and are excited to see us each day. I was unsure of how this was going to be, because I did not like the idea of being with almost twenty young children, but I actually ended up liking it. Some of the kids were better than others, but all of them seemed to usually have good intentions and wanted to learn.

The teachers also appreciated our help, as they are often overbooked and forced to do more work than they should. They must do home visits and three parent-teacher conferences for each child per year, along with teaching the children each day in class. One teacher described her job as teacher/social worker. I thought it was nice to help give the teachers a bit of a break because they work so hard but hardly ever get recognized for it.

Overall, this has been an eye-opening and rewarding experience.