ABC, 123 come teach me

"Stretch, stretch, stretch your arms, high into the air," sings senior Elizabeth Camacho in Room 1 during 5A. Twelve tiny voices chime in as 12 tiny pairs of arms reach toward the ceiling of this classroom that bursts with color and camaraderie. "Stretch so high you reach the sky!" the children chorus triumphantly.

Camacho slips to the floor, and the kids cluster eagerly around her. "This is circle time, you guys," she says warmly. "Today, we're going to read Spot Goes to School." The kids collapse into ecstatic giggles. Their first day of school is coming to an end.

Each day at 7:25 a.m., 12 fresh-faced preschoolers crowd into Room 1, clambering excitedly between the giant crayon replicas marking the entrance to the room in which their Blazer elders work all year to prepare the kids for kindergarten. The kids in the program, Camacho says, are neighborhood children recruited solely through word-of-mouth.

Child Development teacher Sharon Fraser instructs Blazers in teaching methods appropriate for four-year-old neighborhood children. She emphasizes emotional, social, physical and intellectual progress. "The overall objective is for the high schoolers to help the little ones grow in all areas of development," says Fraser, who specifically helps Blazers improve the reading, writing and mathematical readiness of the kids.

Kindergarten, she contends, is not easy, and the preparation that the kids get during child care classes will be indispensable during their forays into next year's kindergarten classrooms.

Guess what I know!

Senior Tania Jeanty and junior Julizza Reyes perch in child-sized chairs, their shins knocking against the miniature table. Still, Jeanty and Reyes exude ease as they lean back, talking over each other in their eagerness to reveal the object of Child Development.

Blazers teach the kids "everything," states Jeanty proudly, and Reyes cuts in to elaborate: "ABCs, numbers, small words . . ." She trails off and Jeanty jumps in immediately: "The whole point of this program is that we try to help the kids out."

Despite her faith in the child care classes, Fraser says that it is easy to feel helpless against the gap that forms before the children have a chance to reach her classroom. One year, a four-year-old boy could already read books on the first day of school while another hadn't the attention span to listen to one story. "Is it possible to close that gap?" asks Fraser.

"It's really hard to right the wrongs," says senior Emma Hatton, another instructor. "But you just try to help the kids as much as you can."

Teaching children, Fraser says, is an "awesome responsibility." She thinks again about the boy who came to Child Development without the attention span necessary to hear a story. "You could see the frustration on his face—he wanted to communicate, but he just couldn't," she says. The Blazers in Child Development worked persistently to entice the little boy to listen to books, and by the end of the year, they noticed marked improvement in his abilities. "He was pointing out words he recognized and asking for favorite books. And that was enough," she says. "We had done something to help him."

Learn, Spot, learn!

The children aren't the only ones learning. "While they learn how to deal with anger, [we] learn how to deal with it too," says Reyes. "What you learn carries over—you use what you learned during conflicts with your friends or in other parts of your life."

Jeanty says knowledge gained in child care class goes beyond school. "It's not like all your other classes," she says. "Here you experience things with the kids."

Hatton took Child Development because she wants to be a teacher, and helping these kids has reinforced that desire. "I had never worked in an intensive teaching situation before," she says, "and this taught me that you need to have a lot of patience to work with kids. But it's worth it, because the knowledge you give them is knowledge that they're going to have with them for the rest of their lives."

Tantrums, Blazers agree, are more frustrating than other aspects of teaching children. However, the more experienced students do not panic when facing shrieking kids. "We just sit them down until they're ready to control themselves," says Camacho.

Blazers say the best part is making a difference in the children's lives. "I was teaching symmetry, and I could tell that the kids really got what symmetry was," says Hatton. "That makes me want to do this kind of thing forever. That's what makes me passionate about the class."

Jeanty sits comfortably, surrounded by vibrant pictures and supplies. She smiles. "Here, you experience things with the kids. They become your little brothers and sisters," she says. "We're helping them out."