Monday, July 6, 2009
Someone from The Jumpstart Program came to talk to us today. We learnt that the Jumpstart model is based on an extensive body of research and practice that demonstrates the lifelong impact of one-to-one early connections between children and caring adults. They focus on three key areas – School Success, Family Involvement, and Future Teachers – to improve early childhood education in the classroom and beyond. As teachers, we need to learn to look at how these three key areas connect to each other. Assessing ourselves (values, cultures, backgrounds which we came from) and how our expectations which are shaped affect the relationship with families. I believe that learning starts at home. Parents are children's first teachers. For myself, apart from learning knowledge from my parents like how to count, how to read, etc, I also learn how to relate to people, and shape my values and priority according to how they did. According to Albert Bandura's social learning theory, it is true that children learn by imitating adults. Thus, we have to set good examples when communicating with parents, as children are good observers as well.
Their goal is to build literacy, language, social, and initiative skills in young children, in which they pair college students, called Corps members, with preschool children in caring and supportive one-to-one relationships for an entire school year. I think this programme would really benefit the children as they had college teachers paired up with children individually (like private tuition in Singapore). Individual needs can be better met as teachers plan specifically to meet their needs in learning.
Their three primary goals are:
School Success: The one-to-one relationships at the core of the Jumpstart model build literacy in combination with social and emotional readiness. As they believe and has seen that consistency, commitment, and caring relationships prepare children for school and help to create a lifelong love of learning.School success is something very relavant to Singapore as our education systems focus a lot on the academics. The language skills as well as mathematical thinking skills the main focus in summative tests. It is appropriate to look into the social and emotional readiness of the children (emergent learning). But! As Singaporeans, we still have the KIASU (we must be the best and first in everything, so doesn't our children) blood in us, which causes us to hurry the child to learn, to do more than they can age and developmental appropriately. Thus, I feel parent education is very important. In these three-prong approach embarked by the Jumpstart, the teachers, parent and children learn from each other.
Family Involvement: Jumpstart's focuses on three areas of family involvement: building strong relationships, ongoing and consistent communication, and the Jumpstart-home learning connection. Jumpstart provides learning activities for the home, thereby reinforcing the learning that takes place during Jumpstart sessions.I think family involvement has already been done in Singapore. However, it's not about the quantity, it is about the quality. It always takes the extra mile for us to meet the needs of both parents and teachers. For example, to bring in a translator to help malay teachers translate English lessons to children who came from China (which is quite common in Singapore currently). The main concern is the manpower and the extra cost to have another person to come into class.
Also, the Jumpstart programme helps families build their own home libraries by sending home books for parents to reinforce Jumpstart sessions to their children. Information boards were done up to provide parents information about activity sessions and they also do their best to keep activities short and simple so that parents who are busy would be able to do it with their children, which I feel is quite applicable to parents in Singapore, who are usually dual-income.
Future Teachers: By working with college students, they help to create new generations that are not only excited about early childhood education, but also have developed the skills to make a difference. In partnership with Pearson, they’ve also started the Pearson Teacher Fellowship, which supports select college graduates teaching in low-income early education centers for two years.
For eight-months each year, our college student Corps members attend twice-weekly, two-hour Jumpstart sessions at a preschool. Each of these sessions consists of three elements:
One-to-One Reading: Children choose books to read with their Corps member, and the Corps member uses the dialogic reading method. In this method, a natural rhythm is established promoting both reading and more in-depth discussion.
Circle Time: In a large-group setting, Corps members lead children in activities that combine literacy, language and social interaction, such as singing, finger-plays, and movement games. During Circle Time, children are welcomed and made to feel like a part of the Jumpstart community.
Choice Time: During this longest period of the Jumpstart session, children create a plan and choose where to play. Corps members guide children to develop and carry out their plans and to review it at the end of each session. During Choice Time, children may also participate in small group activities. These activities, which are planned by Corps members, provide opportunities to experiment and solve problems in ways that are meaningful to each preschool child.
In addition to these Jumpstart sessions, Corps members also spend 2-5 hours per week in Classroom Assistance Time (CAT). During this time, Corps members provide support not only to their partner child, but also to the classroom teachers. CAT allows Jumpstart to reach more children than those who participate in one-to-one sessions, and also allows Corps members to gain valuable early childhood education experiences. This experiences seemed to be rather interesting and similar to my attachment periods. I feel that it would be more meaningful to me if we had such sessions in Singapore as well to help us build our experiences and confidence as teachers. However, often we are rushed to take on many roles the moment we start working in the childcare (some of us even as interns), thus starting from small groups and individuals can be a good place to start for us.
