For the month of January, I spent almost every weekday in the child care center at Laura’s Home, a faith-based women’s crisis center in Cleveland, Ohio. Most of my time was spent in the preschool room, working with children between the ages of 3 and 5. Due to their early life experiences, many of the children who are staying at the center with their mothers suffer from some type of trauma, stemming from neglect, abuse, witnessing violence, etc. This has resulted in developmental delays, ranging from mild to extreme, for a large majority of the children who are in the classroom daily. During the school year, I work at the Oberlin Early Childhood Center. Having that comparison made this experience especially eye-opening for me.

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My work this month taught me just how important social and emotional development are to the ability of a child to absorb new information. It took about a week of me being in the room consistently for the children to spend a sustained amount of time playing with me. These children needed to establish a trusting relationship with me, and I had to actively work to earn that. My students taught me how to show them that I was there to support them and their education. Oftentimes, this looked like me sitting next to them playing with the same toys, but we weren’t playing together. Once they were comfortable being around me, then I could start playing with them, by asking them questions about the game and joining in on the action. From there, I was able to do more and more to build up our relationships until they were open enough to start working on more structured educational activities.

 

When engaging in these learning activities, I found it especially beneficial to begin by playing a little game with the child. During this time, I had to show the child that it was okay to make a mistake, whether it was allowing them to mess up when doing something unrelated to the learning or making a silly mistake myself. This opened the child up more and built up their confidence since they saw that it is okay to not always be right. Fear of messing up is what cut my work short with many of the students in the beginning. When the child didn’t know the answer, they would shut down and cease to participate. Encountering this reminded me of my work in PHITS, where we would tell the students that there were no “right” answers. Though different when working on color or letter names, I recalled our discussions on the importance of encouraging participation from all students. When I built up the mentality that being “right” isn’t linked to being “good,” the children that I worked with were engaged for much longer.

 

I also noticed that the children responded really well when talking about a specific theme or concept throughout the day. I believe that spreading out the learning on a particular topic, from sharing to colors, really helped to reinforce the ideas. This corresponds with concepts from my Memory class. The children seemed to grasp these lessons more than other topics that I worked with the students on. I believe that this is because the learning environment was varied throughout the day. By spreading out the learning, the children were able to create multiple cues to access the desired information on the topic. This means that they had a higher chance of remembering one of the times that the concept was discussed when asked a question about it. The impact of this consistency and sustained learning is something that I never really grasped before now. Previously, I felt that this type of learning was repetitive and boring to students. This experience showed me something different.

 

At the conclusion of my month’s work with Laura’s Home, I am leaving with the feeling of being fulfilled and I have a great sense of accomplishment. My time has helped me grow in various ways. I think that this month has allowed me to learn to be more patient, both with the students and myself. As for the former, since a number of the children were nonverbal and/or developmentally delayed, it often took them longer to do tasks. I really pushed myself to sit back and allow the children to work on the problem themselves without my help unless they asked for it. This was a real challenge for me, surprisingly, when the children were working on putting together the puzzles with wooden pieces that fit into a base. I also learned to be more patient with myself. At first, I was very disappointed that I was struggling to connect with the children. I am glad now though that I continued to reassure myself that it would come in due time. By the end, the children and I had formed very tight bonds, but they needed their time to learn about me, and I about them. This also helped me grow as a learner myself. I had to learn to persevere in building relationships. This lesson will stay with me when working with both children and adults. It was a helpful reminder that not all valuable connections come easy. Going into the Spring semester, I am glad that this experience reignited my ability to persist in the face of challenges and disappointment.

 

I also grew as a communicator throughout this month. Working with these children, I was forced to repeat myself in a number of ways. In the beginning, I repeated my directions word for word. However, I quickly realized that wasn’t effective. I had to invent new ways to get my point across to the children I was speaking with. I found myself using a lot more nonverbal communication to show the children what I expected from them. This idea came from a demonstration from Professor Kershner in EDUC300 when she was able to get the whole class to sing a song with her, including hand gestures, without ever giving us directions. Going along with this, my ability to listen to and comprehend nonverbal communication improved. This skill will be hugely beneficial as I continue my work as both an educator and a learner.

 

Finally, the combination of working with children who have experienced trauma and writing a storybook for kids who have experienced trauma taught me how to offer support and guidance for them. Many children in these situations struggle to communicate their feelings and emotions effectively. I saw it in my research and in my hands-on experience. My work has shown me some good strategies to encourage strong and open communication. Some examples include allowing the child to try ineffective coping mechanisms to see that they don’t work well, offering firm guidance with simultaneous support, and being a role model for the behavior you want to see in them.

 

As I conclude my experience, looking forward, I want to continue working and growing. I am eager to see what comes next.