HUFFINGTON
08.26.12
SMART START?
rocks back and forth. Ms. Sabrena
looks up from her list. “Maybe you
can give me a ‘here’ tomorrow and
make me so happy.”
Tomorrow will be Nawal’s last
chance to participate in the ritual
of attendance-taking before startng
kindergarten, and although this
might seem like a small thing, Ms.
Sabrena doesn’t think of it that
way. Ms. Sabrena spends part of
each day reading to the kids and
teaching numbers and letters and
days of the week, but she knows
that to succeed in school, they’ll
need to know how to do more than
read and count. They’ll need to
know how to play with other kids
and how to follow directions, how
to sit still and listen when someone else is talking (a particular
challenge for the energetic Bryan).
And they’ll need to be able to say
“here” or “present” when the
teacher calls their name.
The North Carolina program, like
the childcare center at the Frank
Porter Graham Institute, aims to
help kids grow in a wide variety of
ways. A lot of that development is
supposed to take place in the playground or at the “activity centers,”
discrete areas of the classroom
where kids can curl up with a book
or play board games or collaborate
on a tower of blocks. Four times
a day, Ms. Sabrena gives the cue:
“You can go to your centers now.”
Today, after she takes attendance,
Zanaya, Alan and Bryan head over
to a table and open up the watercolor sets. Nawal and Jayla go to
the “housekeeping center.” Nawal
places a little doily in every cup in
the muffin tray, as meticulous in
her play as she is in her silence.
Ms. Sabrena sits and watches,
breaking her own silence every
now and then to ask a provocative
question. A query about a water
color rainbow prompts a debate
between three girls on whether
black is a color. In many ways, Ms.
Sabrena seems ideally suited for
this job—she’s firm, patient and
has a master’s degree in counseling
from North Carolina Central University. She’s also up to the physical challenges of chasing four-year
olds around a playground: a purple
bruise on her arm attests to her
weekends spent playing flag-football in cities around the south.
And then there’s the fact that
she’s literally had nearly a lifetime
of experience. Her mother, Joyce
Robinson, founded the center when
Sabrena was a child, and Sabrena’s
sister, stepfather and uncle all work
there. Sabrena got her first job
there when she was 16, and continued working there through college.
But she doesn’t plan to stay much