THE VOICE OF THE TOWNSHIP
One of the most exciting and rewarding duties of the Wayne Township Trustee is to network with agencies forming partnerships that leverage our resources and have a lasting effect on this great community. This past week, I was able to learn a great deal about two sources for early childhood education – the CANI Head Start Program and the Martin Luther King Montessori School. Surprisingly, I was already very familiar with both.
As Board President for CANI (Community Action of Northeast Indiana), I have had the opportunity to learn about all their offered programs and services. One of which is the Head Start Program. With the opening of the new Hanna Creighton Head Start facility, there has been an additional focus for me personally and it’s amazing to find out how much more there is to know. I thought I would take the time to share just a few highlights.
CANI Head Start influences the lives of some 800 children per year, but it is more than just a pre-school. It provides help with educational and social service needs of the families of the children as well.
CANI Head Start is helping interested parents learn how to become substitute teacher assistants through its PASTA program. Parents who volunteer at least 50 hours in the classroom are given additional training in child development and health and safety procedures. After 50 hours, they are then paid as substitute teacher assistants when needed. Interested Head Start parents also have the opportunity to gain their Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) and become qualified as school bus drivers.
Community groups from high school students to retirees also are an important part of CANI Head Start. For example, high school students in the Whitley County HANDS program and Haverhill Elementary School donated time, energy, and gifts to make the holidays brighter for Head Start children. Students from Homestead High School made quilts for nap blankets for Head Start children.
CANI presented a workshop on teaching fire safety to pre-school children last October, which is fire safety month. More than 200 people attended, including CANI Head Start personnel and other Head Start educators from throughout Indiana and Ohio. Dr. Robert Cole, Associate Professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, President of Fireproof Children and a nationally respected authority on fire safety education, presented the morning program. The workshop was free to participants and CANI through the BIC Corp.
When visiting the Martin Luther King Montessori School this past week, I had a flashback… “On March 26, 1971, a new world unfolded for me. This was not the day I discovered a biological concept that I had never known, this was not the day a new Latin declension was introduced, and this was not the day an algebraic equation clarified itself, this was the day I witnessed Montessori learning in action”… and so went my Lions Club speech at Franklin Junior High School in the annual speech contest. Here I am some 33 years later networking with the Martin Luther King Montessori School as the Wayne Township Trustee. Dr. Montessori wrote, “The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when a man’s intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed.”
Most educators and psychologists today agree that the single most important period of development of a person’s intelligence occurs between birth and age six. A child’s mind is extremely absorbent and his curiosity is at a peak during these early years. When properly nourished and stimulated, the child’s mind forms patterns of learning that serve him well throughout his life. The Montessori system of pre-school education has proven to be one of the most effective and fastest growing methods to guide a child through these critical years.
If you would like to enroll a child in one of these two crown jewels of the community, find out more about additional services offered by them, or make a contribution of time and/or resources, contact:
Mary Musson at CANI Head Start – 260/420-2833
Alice Jordan-Miles at the Martin Luther King Montessori School – 260/423-4333
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