Thursday and Friday mornings, I have cafeteria duty at my elementary school. I always smile when our younger students come through the breakfast line. Their heads are at the level of the serving racks, so they have to hold their hands up to get their trays of food. I have to help them or we will have pancakes and syrup everywhere.
P is one of those kindergartners. He stands beside me in his colorful clothes with his bright smile. His voice is so quiet that I have to lean my ear close to him to hear him. He is one of the 15.5 million children in America who lives in poverty, and one of the 90 percent of children at my school who qualifies for free and reduced lunch.
As most teachers know, there is a risk of academic struggle that comes with economic poverty. While P's classmates learn in the classroom, his teacher has to call and ask why he is not in school. When he is at school, his teachers have to gently nudge him and say, "P, wake up—we're working on math." He has trouble writing his name.
I want to hand academic success to him like I hand him his breakfast tray, but it is not that easy. He is only 5 years old, and there is already a gap between his academic achievement and that of his peers. He already has to beat the odds to catch up.
The question for me is, "How do we help students like P?" We have a safety net at our school. We identified and placed him in our Response To Intervention reading program, so he has 30 minutes a day of intensive instruction in a small group with a reading specialist. We hope he will be able to read on grade level by the time he reaches third grade. But I wonder how could he have constructed the knowledge he needed to have a successful K-5 start before he came to us?
So I did some reading this week and came across an article by Marian Wright Edelman. She advocates for Head Start programs as a way to help children develop the skills they need for elementary school. Edelman’s piece, "From Head Start to Harvard," tells the story of Angelica Salazar, a young woman who believes Head Start put her on the path to Harvard and into a top position at the Children's Defense Fund. Salazar helps name and dismantle policies that trap millions of children from low-income homes in the school-to-prison pipeline each year.
After watching an interview with Salazar about the National Head Start Association, I was inspired to remember that Head Start can help children like P receive the educational, health, nutritional and social skills they need to get a successful start in school. Yet, the sad truth is that fewer than 3 percent of children eligible for Head Start actually enroll.
To bring the issues affecting young children to the forefront, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has sponsored “The Week of the Young Child.” This week is set aside to "focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to recognize the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs." The theme of the week is “Early Years are Learning Years.”
Ironically, Congress has recently debated cuts of more than $1 billion from Head Start programs. I encourage you to remember that early years are indeed learning years. Our focus should be on how we can make programs like Head Start stronger and more accessible to more children, especially those at-risk. With all of my heart, I hope one day to see P taking his lunch from the Harvard cafeteria and not from a prison plate. We need to advocate now for Head Start. We have to work together to help P make it in the cafeteria, in the classroom and in life.
Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.
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