Sunday, July 02, 2006
Preschool's amazing graces
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- For those who have too little
- Time to gather mountain views
- Our blind spot on roads
- Following the money trail
From the RoundTable blog
Jeanne Roper describes one 2-year-old girl as almost feral when she came to the Valley Interfaith Child Care Center when it opened in Christiansburg two years ago.
"She was wild, unruly and had almost no language. She tried every nerve-ending the staff had to offer."
When Roper, then president of VICCC's board of directors, dropped in on the program, she'd hold the child. "She tore the earrings out of my ears. When I'd say no, she didn't seem to know what that meant."
That little girl has transitioned out of the child care center into New River Community Action Head Start, which partners with VICCC. Executive Director Katy St. Marie recently saw her there, in the building the programs share.
St. Marie described the encounter to me last week: "She's sitting on her chair with her hands on her lap" -- not standing on the chair or running around the chair. St. Marie greeted her. "And she said, 'I would like another banana, please.' "
Here's where a person of faith might exclaim, "Praise God!" It was possible to imagine this child's future in a new, hopeful way.
She's still no angel, the child care director allowed. But she is a changed little girl.
That transformation is the gold Virginia can mine by offering quality preschool to all children in the state, whether or not their parents can afford it.
Gov. Tim Kaine wants the state to dig out that treasure. Roper wants to help. Better, she has experience bringing the sacred and the secular together to work toward that goal, a necessary mix if the state is to be able to use much of the existing infrastructure of private day care centers, many with religious affiliations.
How broadly the VICCC model can be applied is problematic. And that is likely to be but one of many issues to be sorted out by the governor's Strong Start Pre-K Council, an advisory body that will help him pursue what could be his hallmark initiative: universal access to preschool for children 4 and younger. Kaine named Roper to the council, which met for the first time last month.
Roper has a vision of public-private, faith-based early childhood education that even a purist on church-state separation can share.
Your thoughts
- Post to the message board
- Agree or disagree? Take the poll
The faith part comes in the vision itself, to offer the poorest children the same enriching experiences as the most privileged, from the time they are born till they go to kindergarten.
The execution is strictly secular.
"We are very broadly interfaith," Roper said of VICCC's board of directors and supporters. The program, which expanded to a second site this year in Blacksburg, is truly ecumenical, she was careful to note, not merely interdenominational. Backers come from various Christian denominations and from Jewish, Hindu and Ba'hai congregations. Muslims have shown an interest, though no Muslims participate. But, she noted brightly, "We have the New River Zen community. I'm a member of that" -- as well as Blacksburg's Christ Episcopal Church.
"Every faith has an interest in children and the care of children." VICCC came together around that.
Still, I noted, many faith-based social programs see instruction in the faith, whatever it may be, as foundational, a necessary part of the benefits participants receive.
"We went through quite a little discussion about that," Roper acknowledged.
"We all agreed it's important for children to learn gratitude." So children sing a little poem before lunch, she said. "But we didn't want to get into the issue of sectarian prayers. ... Parents need to give their children the religious upbringing they want."
They sing "The world's been good to me," St. Marie told me, a nonsectarian variation of the Johnny Appleseed grace. "I think it's not good to just dive into the food."
But she added, "We don't want to promote any particular way of being grateful. We're taking time to recognize the gifts around us, but not really saying this is God or that is God."
VICCC's mission, Roper said, is to offer low-income families child care for ages 0 to 3 or 4 -- but especially for children 3 or younger, the care that is most expensive and the hardest to find. She sees her appointment to the governor's council as "a chance to get the idea of the VICCC vision out there" to serve the poorest and the youngest in a rural region on a broad interfaith basis.
"I don't think there's anything in the U.S. like us now."
Stripped of religious instruction, is it faith-based? For myself, I answer with St. Marie's observations about that little girl who came to her almost feral. She was tested by accident at the 4-year-old level when she was actually 3 -- "and she passed with flying colors." She didn't have any books in her home and tore up those at the center.
"Now, her mother said all she wants to do all weekend is read. She can't read yet. But she likes it."
If that's not God's work, I don't know what is.
