JCAC students put training into practice at Head Start

Maddi Schumer, left, assists Dream Dowdy, right, and Kaiveon Terrill, as they work on a paper snake Thursday at Cole County Head Start. Schumer is one of several students from the Jefferson City Academic Center who visited the preschool to read and interact with the young students.
Maddi Schumer, left, assists Dream Dowdy, right, and Kaiveon Terrill, as they work on a paper snake Thursday at Cole County Head Start. Schumer is one of several students from the Jefferson City Academic Center who visited the preschool to read and interact with the young students.

Students from a couple classes at Jefferson City Academic Center read and did activities Thursday morning with students at Cole East Head Start child care center.

The nine students from Kim Sellers' and Debbie Cornell's classes made art projects with the preschool children and read "Mouse Count" by Ellen Stoll Walsh with them.

Cornell said JCAC students have served at Cole East Head Start before, but this was the "first time they've had a real program," the first time they've gone to read like they did. That also means the students got to learn how to manage something in addition to building confidence - around children, in this case.

"It gets them out of their comfort zone," she said.

Before they went to the child care center this week, she said, the JCAC students got training from the grant-based "Read from the Start" program offered by the Missouri Humanities Council. Two 90-minute training sessions got students comfortable with reading to the children, and they learned activities to do with them.

Cole East Head Start Director Kishia Brown said the child care center has 30 preschool students upstairs and 16 infants downstairs on a typical day.

Cornell said earlier in the week that four JCAC students and fellow teacher Jay Hebenheimer read Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" to children at the child care center.

She added Thursday that the JCAC students get to keep the books the "Read from the Start" program gave them to share.