Collaboration from PreK to High School
Head Start and Child Development Lab Partnership
Enfield High School’s Child Development Lab
course and Enfield’s Head Start program
have forged a unique partnership. For the
past five years, as part of the course, Catherine Jurgen’s students have volunteered at
Head Start once a week for ten weeks. Deb
Clement, Director of Head Start, has provided Enfield High students with high-quality
learning experiences based on relationships
and authentic learning. The Head Start program has allowed the Child Development Lab
curriculum to come alive for these students;
applying key concepts has led to meaningful connections for both the preschool and high school students alike.
The staff at Head Start has opened their hearts and
classrooms to the Child Development Lab students,
who are exposed to Head Start teaching methods
and offered a tremendous amount of encouragement. On the surface, the collaboration may look
much like play time; however, Head Start teachers
demonstrate the use of the Connecticut Early Learning and Development Standards in all of their lessons, and the high school students benefit from observing and taking part in these lessons. Delaney
Bowles, a sophomore at Enfield High School, testi-
2
fied to the value of this partnership: “Volunteering
at Enfield Head Start was an amazing experience
that strongly impacted my decisions about my future career. It helped me discover my love for educating young minds and the opportunity to help
them grow. I absolutely loved every minute of my
volunteer work at Enfield Head Start. I proudly
spent over 46 fabulous hours with the children of
Enfield Head Start this year.”
EHS students participate in
high-quality learning experiences involving language
and literacy, mathematics,
science, and creative arts.
They observe aspects of
children’s cognitive, physical, and social and emotional development, and in
past years, after this experience, Enfield High students modeled and created lesson plans to execute
in the high school lab with preschoolers from the
community. This partnership fosters learning for
everyone involved, and the relationships forged
over the years have certainly impacted both Enfield
High and Head Start students.
inSights - Spring 2016