What a Fantastic Start to the Year!!

         Franklin Square House is one of the sites for the 2010/2011 Jumpstart year. We are all very excited to be a part of Jumpstart and are very fortunate to be working with Franklin Square. The program consists of twenty-four children and ten teachers; it is located on Tremont Street in Boston. Alicia, our team leader, and our members Kayla, Shay, Sarah, Anyssa, Victoria, and Rebecca are very happy with the way the program is run. The teachers have been so friendly and very welcoming towards letting us join their class. We are constantly learning from the teachers and the children! Every session gets better and better! We are looking forward to watching these children grow over the next year.

Kayla Sharpe

Another New Site for Jumpstart at Wheelock College!!

      
We all entered the Jumpstart program with a similar goal in mind: we wanted to help these children prepare for kindergarten. All of us expected to form a bond with the children in our preschool. Little did we know that all of these children from Ellen Jackson Childcare Center would immediately steal our hearts. Little voices exclaiming “Jumpstart’s here!!!!” are heard every time the eight of us walk through the doors of the center. This sound is music to our ears. The personalities of our children have become quite clear. We have our energetic professor, the very imaginative drama queen, Mr. giggles with his head in the clouds, the sweetie-pie tough guy, the always smiling spider-monkey and so many other wonderful entertaining kids. The teachers are so supportive and are really getting involved with our program as well. They even have a song transitioning into Jumpstart! We are not the Ellen Jackson Team, we are the Ellen Jackson Family. Our team leader mom is the ever so uplifting Miss Olivia. I have yet to see a frown on her face. She really cares about these children as well as each person in our family. Our returner and second Jumpstart mom, Miss Christina, is a tiny bundle of information. She is another who is eager to help and gives her all to Jumpstart. The rest of our family, the chickadees, include Miss Lauren, Miss Alyssa, Miss Melissa, Miss Colleen, Miss Ariana and myself, Miss Kris. Each of us brings our own unique talents and flair to our program, making this experience the best we can for our kids. Since Ellen Jackson is such a new site, there are a few obstacles we have to overcome. We hope that our families will warm up to us and our program and realize that we are really care about their children. The little bumps in the road will soon smooth over as time goes on. The Ellen Jackson family is looking forward to watching these precious children grow and succeed.

Kristin Fagan

So Far This Year on Ruggles Tuesday/Friday Team...

        The Ruggles Tueday/Friday team consists of Andrew and Briahna (materials), Robin (family involvement), Mariana (spirit squad), Nicole (book coordinator),Lindsay C. (program partner), Lindsay A. (group leader) and myself, Kyle (blog writer). This year we have a diverse group of children coming from many backgrounds; we have 16 children with room for more enrollment. More than a few of us are entirely new to the program but all are very fast and eager learners. This year looks to be a good one. It's been off to an awesome start!

Kyle Wardwell

What an Amazing Team!!

Ruggles Gilday is a daycare program located on  38 Horadan Way in Roxbury, MA and is a part of a larger organization called Associated Early Care and Education. Early Education specialists support teachers in executing a curriculum that benefits and engages each individual child. It is accessible by several T buses as well as the green line trolley train. My team comes to Ruggles Gilday Wednesday and Friday for sessions from 2:30-5:30; other members have their Classroom Assistance Time Tuesday through Friday. We work well as a team and with the children; we are amazing leaders with a great sense of humor. We are a boisterous group and we individually have interesting and amazing laughs!We have spontaneous bonding moments, like going to Berry Line before our Wednesday training. We have dinner Wednesday night before a lovely seminar or training, and we sometimes have dinner Friday nights as well.

Tasheka Nelson

The Voice for Crispus Attuck's Wednesday/ Friday Team!!

         My team and I are part of a Wednesday/Friday group that works with preschoolers at a school called Crispus Attucks.  This preschool is in Dorchester, MA and our transportation includes walking to the Ruggles Orange Line stop and taking a bus that drops us off directly in front of the school. There are nine of us who travel together; however, a few of us go in early to set up. The room that we do our sessions in is called "Chipmunks 2" and the age group is between four and five. We are all assigned at least one child; some have just one, some have two, and some even have three children.
        By now we are all adjusted to the routine of sessions. We are still learning about our children's personalities and the way they learn. We are also learning how to excite the children for reading time and the proper techniques to appropriately read to children.
        As a team, our strengths are shown in the way we cooperatively work together in our sessions and when we have our team meetings. During sessions we work cooperatively by communicating beforehand about what is going to happen and model cooperation to the children. Also, during our team meetings we bring up pros and cons of the day, or as we like to call them "pluses" and "deltas.” We discuss things that went well that day and things that need to be worked on. When we find things that need to be worked on we offer each other suggestions as to what we can do next time.

Heather MacDonald

PROJECT HOPE!

       Project Hope is a building in which there is a homeless shelter for women; there is a portion of the building that is a preschool for children of ages zero months to five years old. The preschool has a main play room for the older children and a smaller room for the toddlers and babies. In the room there are a multitude of objects to play with; these include the block area, the painting easels, and the elevated dramatic play area. The main play room is where the corps members have session and class room assistance time. Session planning occurs after session in a room directly below the main play room, which is used when the children cannot go outside because of the weather.

When we arrive for session the children are just waking up from nap. Some of them see the Jumpstart shirts and start folding up their mats right away, while a select few have taken the phrase “sleeping like a log” to a whole new level. Once we rouse all of the children they head to snack and we sit with them while they eat. Corps members are always offered snacks after the children have received servings first. Usually each corps member tries to sit with their partner children; mine all sit at the same table by themselves, so I get to join them and check up to see how they are doing. Each child finishes snack at different times (my partner children usually go for seconds) so name cards are started at different times, but everyone usually looks around at the others to see when to start reading the book for that day. From there, the rest of the session plan is implemented and everything runs smoothly, unless the children did not get to go outside that day and are a little more rambunctious and distractible then usual. During center time everyone helps out one another; for example, if a corps member notices there is a large number of children in a center that they are not in charge of and they have no children in their particular center, they will move to help out their fellow corps member, while still making sure that if any children want to go to the corps member’s activity he or she is ready to mobilize.

The feel of the group is very nice and has no butting personalities or cliques. All of the teachers are happy to have us in their preschool and it is fun working with them as well. Session planning can sometimes be hard to focus on because people may be tired from the day. It is interesting to watch the change in corps members after session because they know that once they walk out of jumpstart session they do not have to keep their enthusiastic face on anymore. We try to keep our energy for session review and planning up and our complaints about the long trip home down. We are looking forward to our family event because a little less than half of the children get picked up by bus drivers, so we have not met all the parents yet. All in all, it has been a pleasant experience at project hope.

Ian Driscoll

Look What's New to Jumpstart!!

            This is my second year as a Jumpstart corps member at Wheelock College. This year I am on the Pilot Team at College Bound Dorchester. My team is the first team throughout Jumpstart to work with home childcare providers. My team includes Michaela (team leader), Ashley (a returnee), me, Brooke, and Stephanie. We also have a few corps members who volunteer to help us during session. So far, sessions have been going very well. In the beginning it was a challenge for us to create the space needed for session because we do session in the basement of a church. We had to create centers out of rugs, chairs, and tables. We became very successful at this and College Bound Dorchester even purchased us kid sized tables and chairs for session. We are extremely grateful for their cooperation and generosity. Every day for session we come an hour early to set up our centers. We created a secluded area for dramatic play, a table for puzzles and manipulatives, a table for the art center, a rug for reading, a table for the writing center, and a round rug for “Let’s find out about it.” Then we do circle time and sharing and goodbye on top of a stage on individual rug squares that have each of the children’s names on them. There are 17 children in our session that come from 6 different childcare providers. The providers are so helpful during session and interact very well with all of the children. We are all so thankful for their support and help. Sessions keep getting better as the weeks fly by. All of the children have come from non classroom settings and are adapting well with the run of session. Hilary, one of our site managers, has also been so helpful during sessions and we are very thankful for all that she has done for us. We all are so excited to see how the rest of the year turns out and so enthused to be a part of the very first home-child care team.

Lynndsay Holden

Jenn from Crispus Attucks

      My team’s preschool is Crispus Attucks Children Center, which is located in Dorchester. It is a pretty long trip there, but is well worth it. Crispus Attucks is the second largest provider of infant, toddler, and preschool care in Boston. It is definitely the biggest preschool I have ever seen. There are around 200 children at the center; the ages range from one month to six years old. Crispus Attucks has been around for almost thirty years. There are two huge buildings; one building is used mostly for the infants and toddlers, while the other building is used for preschool age children. The buildings contain fifteen classrooms, a playground, a kitchen, a gym, and computers in every classroom.  There are around sixty-five teachers and staff. The staff is very welcoming and friendly. The teachers also know each other very well; they seem to have made a very close community and support group for each other. Our team has seven corps members, plus our team leader, Melissa Ferragamo. The corps members are, Sarah Fenty, Keveisha Robinson-Clark, Vanessa Lugo, Caroline Listernick, Sarah Willey, Chelsea Szalanski, and of course me, Jenn Vigue. We have all enjoyed our first few weeks at Crispus Attucks. We have started to get to know our classroom teachers, Mrs. Jones and Ms. Ella, quite well. Both teachers have worked at the preschool for a very long time. Although my team has a lot of different personalities and a lot of differences, we all seemed to have fallen in love with the children in our classroom.

Jenn Vigue  

A Word From Ashley...

            Most people choose to be in Jumpstart because they want to help children. I am one of those people. Choosing Jumpstart is something that has been rewarding and fun. My Jumpstart team is located at Ruggles-Gilday in Roxbury. There are eight of us who work together to help children.

We start our sessions by walking, as a team, to Ruggles; we do this on Monday and Thursday afternoons. Once we arrive, we set up for the session by gathering the supplies needed. These include posters for songs and poems and supplies for the centers and “Lets Find Out About It.” After we gather our materials, we enter the Busy Bees’ classroom. During session, we all have a lot of fun reading, singing songs, and creating memories with our children. At the end of session, we all walk back to campus together and have a team meeting, where we talk about what went well in sessions and things we think we can improve on.

The best memory I have so far from a session is when all three of my children recognized that they had an “e” in their names. Each session, at the start of reading, I go over the letters in each child’s name with him or her. All of my children are able to recognize and tell me the first letter of their names. While having their names on cards in front of them, they were able to tell me that they all had the letter ‘e” in their names.

-Ashley Monck

Welcome!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to welcome you to Wheelock's blog for Jumpstart! We are almost done with our first semester hear at Wheelock College and our looking foward to next semester. We have nine teams this year, and an amazing group of corps members! =)