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First Steps
All the toddlers from the Purple Room are outside for morning playtime except for one little boy and his teacher. She's helping him put his mittens back on over a new Band-Aid. "All better?" she asks. "Yeah" he replies without a trace of tears. "Want to go back out?" "Yeah, I want to run again." He says "You better be careful." She reminds him, "Because that's how you fell." But he's out the door before she finishes. WCC's Children's Center is a homey, comfortable place. All the rooms have lots of daylight coming though big windows, child-size tables and chairs as well as at least one cushioned sofa. Children's artwork covers the walls-turkeys with glued-on feathers, finger painting and crayon drawings. At every classroom entrance is a photo of the head teacher along with a short biography. Next to this are photos of the foster grandparents who work with the children and notices for parents concerning schedules, snacks, health issues, etc. Each of the classrooms is named by color. The green and gold rooms are for preschoolers; blue, yellow and purple are for toddlers. The door to each classroom is painted its own color and inside it's repeated again somewhere on a wall or the ceiling. In the large indoor gym. the youngest children, ages 18 months to two years, are toddling across the cushioned floor, limbing on the bright plastic structures, or tumbling on the giant bean bags. They all seem so quietly purposeful, playing intently to a soundtrack of bubbly childhood classics like "This Old Man," "I'm a Little Teapot" and "If You're Happy and You Know It." Next to the gym is the kitchen. The pantry is stocked with boxes and boxes of graham crackers, cookies, cereal and cans of apple juice and applesauce. The baking area smells faintly of peanut butter cookies. Nearby is a dryer that Director Char Longino says is used mostly to dry wet coats and mittens after winter outdoor play. A happy sense of calm pervades the Children's Center. No one is crying, no one is fighting over toys or begging to be picked up. How could it be? First steps The Children's Center has a history nearly as long as the College. In fact WCC was the first community college in the state to begin onsite childcare. The program began on the Willow Run campus in 1968 when behavioral science instructor, Bill Moy helped put together a proposal to establish a nursery school. The nursery school really had two purposes: First to create a place for students in Moy's Child Development classes to work with and observe children and second to accommodate the large number of women with children who attended the College. The first semester only 12 children enrolled in the nursery school but that quickly grew to 40 and by the next semester it was 80 and still growing. Students in Moy's Child Development classes spent two hours of lab time in the Center each week. In class they learned about the developmental stages of childhood and in the Center they observed how children played and interacted. "They had the actual experience of seeing these developmental processes going on," says Moy. However, because the College grew so quickly, it was only a few years later that there were just too many students for the Center to accommodate and the lab segment was discontinued. In the beginning, all parents were required to take a one credit seminar on parenting that explained some of the developmental stages of childhood and gave practical advise about how to handle children's behavior. Moy says, "The parents discussed things like the 'troublesome two's and how to set limits. We gave them a model of understanding about child development so that they didn't just work blind and react rather than being proactive. "Parents said it awakened them to a lot of issues they weren't aware of and when they put these into practice life at home became easier to live." Surprisingly, child care was free to students in the early days. It wasn't until the College moved to the new campus that the Center began charging on a sliding scale. Explains Moy, "This was a community college. It existed at the favor of the community and we were providing a community service to the community. We were providing a social, emotional, educational experience for the children." LINK-UP winter 2001, Volume XXIII, Issue Number By Laura Lyjak Return to About Us page.
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