Promise Heights in Focus: Nurture Joy and Comfort while Building Social Skills
As a safety measure, Parent University's Meet Up in the Park families gathers families outdoors
“I know I’m only one person, but one person can really make a difference. It has been overwhelming at times, but it makes my heart smile that we are doing so much in the community to reach the people who need it the most.”
Nikea Taylor, Early Childhood Assistant at Furman L. Templeton Preparatory Academy
Ever since the pandemic shuttered all Baltimore City Schools, the Early Childhood teams at Promise Heights have been pulling out all the stops to ensure they effectively reach children under the age of five and their families living in Upton/Druid Heights. In mid-March, we presumed that pause would be several weeks. Then by April, the closure extended until the end of the school year. Most recently, in mid-July the school system announced that SY20-21 will launch remotely on September 8. As of now, there’s no definitive date when in-person learning will resume.
As you might imagine, this is difficult for anyone bringing a hands-on approach to serving their constituencies. So, at this point, our full Early Childhood team has been refashioning our methods to fit current needs. Linda Callahan, LMSW, Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant based at Furman L. Templeton Preparatory Academy, recently explained that, “During a typical school year, my work is to support students, teachers, and families with the social and emotional learning of each child. We traditionally work with children in person, delivering a social/emotional curriculum in the classroom, and we also meet with small groups to learn social skills. We also work individually with students in play therapy.”
Currently as COVID-19 cases are rising nationwide, and it seems unlikely that any aspect of learning in 2020 will eventually be remembered as “traditional.”
For the past five months, educators, schools, and suddenly-appointed-homeschooling-families have been forced to reinvent nearly every aspect of academic and social learning via remote and electronic platforms. And ever since the pandemic closed schools, our Promise Heights team has actively explored how to tweak and (from a safe distance) do precisely what we do so well in our usual face-to-face capacity.
It’s a tough dilemma. Linda also shared that, “knowing we’ll not be able to meet with students in the school building, we’re trying to come up with creative ways to continue to support our families. We are hoping to meet students in their Google Classrooms to provide social emotional lessons. We’re also imagining having both virtual and in-person options for meeting small groups of students to work on social skills and hope to be trained in a new model for providing intensive services when needed.”
Linda’s colleague, former teacher Nikea Taylor, is an experienced educator of young kids in classrooms and has found the launch of remote learning to be challenging for everyone. “Back in the spring, a lot of parents just gave up, basically saying, ‘I’m going to do what I can do, and I’m not even going to worry about it.’”
Nikea shared her hopes to “lead virtual groups so we can really help the children. A virtual group would definitely look different than a normal class in school. I’m picturing it—if we implement it in the fall—as probably lasting fifteen minutes max for each group.” This goal seems realistic, as maintaining fifteen-minutes of focus for children age five and younger might be nearly as challenging as running a five-minute mile.
In an effort to provide content lead by people the children know, the team has loaded virtual sites, such as Linda’s Facebook account with short but entertaining and informative videos for students, while using platforms that kids can navigate on their own. Callahan manages these sites frequently, saying,“We will continue to update our social media pages with resources and offer virtual office hours to families.”
Callahan and Clare Donofrio, LMSW (Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant at Eutaw-Marshburn Elementary School) work closely to develop new offerings for Parent University – a set of parent education workshops for families with children ages birth to five. Clare is pleased that, “our program has adapted through the many phases of COVID-19. We began as an in-person cohort meeting for breakfast, circle time, and parent support and education.”
Reflecting about the past months, Clare shared that, “after the stay-at-home order took effect, we invited parents to join us for a virtual Parent University Chat. In this phase, parents had the opportunity to check-in, discussing their feelings of stress, and the challenges of on-line learning. They offered each other mutual support, while our staff provided resources and relevant content gleaned from Chicago Parent Program and other sources. Yet parents said they missed the chance to get out and interact with other families, and some had technology barriers to joining the online meetings. We decided to meet safely outside each week in the pavilion behind the Pennsylvania Avenue A.M.E. Zion Church, and did that every Tuesday for the month of July. We called it Parent University’s Meet-up in the Park. A group from the original cohort has enjoyed these socially distanced, masked-up gatherings. Lunch is provided and children have time to socialize and sing a few songs. Meanwhile, parents enjoy much-needed time to connect with other adults in person and begin to normalize meeting safely in public.”
Meet-up in the Park
Families enjoyed socializing together from a safe distance
Nikea recalled their first gathering, saying, “the children were so happy to see each other—it was crazy. All in all, it was us just giving listening ears, and sharing thoughts, and embarking on the new life we’re all experiencing now.”
The Early Childhood team has also been working on creating better relationships with Union Baptist Head Start, so as to facilitate successful transitions for children and families from pre-school to “big” school. Last summer, Aamil Saboor, UBHS Executive Director, shared that they would love to have a summer program, to continue learning and supports for families. Thanks to the Promise Neighborhood grant funding, Promise Heights was able to fund slots for 51 children for an 8-week summer program which provided an opportunity for children to continue to develop skills and reduce skill regression. In addition, crucial services to support healthy child development such as speech and language therapy and occupational and physical therapy continued without a summer hiatus. Although we weren’t able to do the same in summer 2020 due to COVID-19 concerns, we look forward to continuing that important work with UBHS.
Yet since summer weather won’t last forever, our team is looking towards ways to continue meeting safely come autumn. Clare added that, “One of our new ideas is to make our Judy Center Book Club virtual by creating a 6-week virtual “Pajama Party Book Club” program, where families tune in one evening a week to read a book and do a craft with us in their pajamas. We plan to deliver the book and crafts to families’ homes each week.”
Our efforts don’t stop there. Early Childhood teams have been distributing Early Childhood packets with informative postcards, booklets, and kid-friendly play and crafting items during community food deliveries, such as June and July’s weekly MealTrain program with food from the Pearlstone Kitchen. Clare points out many benefits of these packets, including that, “Bubbles and play dough are always a big hit with little ones as old as seven or eight, and I like that they allow fine motor skills practice.”
Can you tell that we’re proud of our energetic team’s tireless efforts? Nikea’s pride is equally evident when she shared that, “We do so much! Every day, it’s something different: if parents need to go to the market, I say, ‘I’ll try to get you there. You just have to have your mask on.’ It’s a lot! We definitely do a lot. I recently had an emergency with a parent—she was distressed because she couldn’t get a babysitter for her kids. I was trying to help her find resources. We finally found the resources she needed—she’s getting daycare vouchers. There’s a lot that we can do as a community to help these parents out.”
As mentioned from the start, our summer has been busy. Nikea filled in details, “We pick up produce boxes every Monday to take to families. We do the MealTrain on Fridays. It’s a lot. Once we all get it all bagged up, we disperse, and everybody delivers food to the different families. And guess what? That’s another piece of Promise Heights that keeps my heart smiling, because a lot of families say, ‘We’re so grateful for this food!’ The food is different…it’s not what they’re used to. The food is good, it has such a clean good taste and there’s a lot of it! A lot of our families, if they do have more than four in their families, a majority of the time they have a lot of smaller children, which means that one serving can feed two family members. I haven’t heard anyone complain that it’s not enough to eat. Again, I don’t know…it just makes me smile!”
We hope that all of these smiles are contagious—the joy and happiness are the best qualities we’re sharing throughout the community during this exceptionally challenging year.