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Teach For America Goes Pre-K

In the pilot year of Teach For America's early childhood initiative, corps members work with tiny tots to make big gains

Jessica Haskell's first memory as a teacher is a blur of proud parents snapping cell-phone photos and tiny students sniffling with separation anxiety. "The first day with my kids was incredible and overwhelming," says Haskell, a 2006 Metro D.C. corps member who teaches preschoolers and kindergartners. "A lot of the day was just trying to feel out who my students were, what levels they were at, so that I could go home and really think through how my classroom was going to be as successful as possible."

That meant planning lessons that would be both challenging and appropriate for students like Kaisha, who had no concept of the color yellow, as well as those like Dana, who was reading at level J and could count higher than 100. "Now, my whole motto is differentiation," Haskell says. "There is no other way to meet all of the needs of my students. I do a lot of assessments, formal and informal, every day and throughout the week, so I always know where my kids are."

The learning curve has been steep for Haskell and the other corps members involved in Teach For America's early childhood initiative, which launched last summer. Although corps members have taught pre-K since the organization's inception, the initiative marks the first dedicated effort at this level, with a cohort of 12 teachers in Metro D.C. and another 15 at sites across the country, including Houston, New York City, South Dakota, and Camden, N.J.

"We are looking to be a force for reform in early childhood in the same way we are in K-12," says Catherine Brown, the initiative's first director. "We are infusing new blood into the field-people who hadn't planned to enter this space but see it as a powerful way to reach kids at a critical time in their lives." Indeed, last year alone, 28 percent of corps members expressed an interest in teaching in early childhood classrooms.

"To me, it seems like early ed is on the tipping point," says Larrisa Wilkinson, a corps member in Haskell's cohort, who teaches pre-K at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School. "It's just now getting into the national dialogue, and I was intrigued that Teach For America realized that and decided to take it seriously."

One reason, says Brown, is that "we started seeing a lot of research showing that early intervention is one of the key ways to close the achievement gap. We saw some of our close friends, like KIPP, go in that direction with amazing success. It changed our perception of what's possible, in terms of academic outcomes for kids at that level."

Summer institute for Metro D.C.'s early childhood cohort featured a specialized curriculum with content-specific instruction. The group met with a range of early education experts, including policy makers, researchers, teachers, and alumni. In addition, the Metro D.C. cohort is enrolled in the master's program in early childhood education at nearby George Mason University and belongs to content-specific learning teams. The corps members also have access to a listserve where they can chat informally with six alumni in the field and an online library of early childhood resources called "My Teaching Partner," which includes video clips of excellent preschool teaching.

Like all corps members, the early childhood cohort learned how to apply instructional principles in a way that was developmentally appropriate for their students' age group. "A lot of what we learned in terms of tracking and progress is similar to other grades, but it's a lot more anecdotal," says Haskell. "Anything a child does can be an assessment. I spend an entire day with a child and learn so many things that I would never know if I only tracked them quarterly. They're assessed on things they do and say, and you have to strive to catch everything and be there to hear and see it."

Classroom management also looks different. "The kids need to move-especially the boys," she says. "It's about finding the time in the day to make sure that they're still being 5 and playing. Of course you want to hit all the academic skills, but the social skills are just as important."

With all of the lessons learned during this pilot year, both corps members and Teach For America staff are looking forward to making improvements for the coming fall, when the program expands to 150 corps members in 10 regions, including Los Angeles, New Mexico, and the Rio Grande Valley. The curriculum design team is enhancing and refining instructional toolkits that will contain even more developmentally specific resources and research-driven guidance.

Another important change is that the incoming early childhood corps members will have the opportunity to teach preschoolers during summer institute. Since pre-K children are not required to attend summer school, Teach For America's institute teams spent the past year developing partnerships with local preschools to make matching possible.

Despite challenges, the early childhood corps members have taken the year in stride-and have been incredibly successful. "We're very impressed by the progress our pre-K teachers are making," says Teach For America-Metro D.C. Executive Director Amy Black. "[They] know their work has the potential to literally put their students on a different life path."

Wilkinson, for one, was determined to change the perception of her classroom as merely a day care center. So while she does spend significant time teaching her 3- and 4-year-old students socioemotional skills such as being kind to each other and making eye contact, she also focuses on academic objectives such as recognizing letters and sounds.

Each day the class works on learning the alphabet by singing songs or creating art about the "letter of the week." A recent week celebrating the letter F had the students coloring brightly- hued fish and sharing stories about their underwater adventures. Many of Wilkinson's 17 students can spell simple words and are learning to read, to the amazement of others in the building. Even a shy student named Darien, who arrived not knowing a single letter and struggled with learning, has mastered the entire alphabet and now is the most eager learner in the bunch. "I hope that in two years," says Wilkinson, "I can go into the first grade class here and my kids will be the top readers."