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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM 17
HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE CONT’D
An Effective Pivot
artners with Head Start to Create Online Preschool
STCC PSpringfield Technical Community College (STCC) student Hannah Lavigne is leading
eye and their view, drifting upward to her bedroom ceiling. Maybe, like the balloons in the book, this balloon was having a dance party in the sky. They watched as the air-filled balloon dropped to the ground.
Welcome to Head Start at Home.
Last fall, Lavigne, like all STCC early-childhood practicum students, completed her practicum teach- ing online.
In March, when the pandemic shut down schools, closed daycare centers, and sent legions of college students into intensive online learning, professors in STCC’s early-childhood education program didn’t panic; they adapted.
About 55 students are enrolled in STCC’s one-year certificate program or two-year associate-degree pro- gram in early childhood education, including both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking cohorts.
Students are required to spend 150 hours teaching in the field under the guidance of mentor teachers. Prior to pandemic shutdowns, they logged those hours in a variety of settings: family childcare opera- tions, private childcare programs, public-school preschool programs, and federally funded Head Start
centers.
When many centers closed down, STCC stu-
dents were left without their practicum settings to return to. Luckily, many had already logged time in the field. And then the state reduced the teaching requirements to 75 hours.
“We sort of had to just muddle through and scrape ourselves over the finish line,” said STCC Assistant Professor Aimee Dalenta, who works in the early- childhood education program. “But then, in the summer, we were in a real pickle.”
To meet that need, Dalenta created a six-week- long, fully virtual preschool for children ages 3-5 in which STCC students took turns planning lessons, teaching them, and serving as assistant teachers.
The virtual preschool was a hit for both the stu- dents who gained practicum experience and the par- ticipating families whose children had enrichment experiences. STCC students not only learned about good teaching, they gained first-hand experience in something all teachers understand: the need to adapt to whatever circumstances they face.
Please see Preschool, page 18
Hannah Lavigne
lesson and carry it out. She selected the book Where Do Balloons Go? by Jamie Lee Curtis, a story about a lost balloon and its many adventures, and came up with a related activity.
As teachers do, she held the book up to make sure the little ones could see the colorful pictures.
But the students in this Head Start class were no wiggle worms clustered around this student teacher’s feet.
They were each in their own home, watching their teacher and class- mates on a computer screen.
And from her own home, Lavigne conducted the activity she planned, showing them two balloons, one
a small class of preschoolers in story time and an activity. She had to plan the
buoyant with helium, the other gravity-bound. When Lavigne let go of the helium balloon, students squealed when it disappeared from the camera’s