Related article: Growing the Supply of Early Learning Opportunities in Columbus
(The White House Blog)

We’re thrilled about the early childhood pipeline, which was announced late last week. 

It has been in development for years and under wraps for months, so I’m pleased to share the story now and give credit where credit is due. 

Over six years ago, we recognized that at the Schoenbaum Family Center (SFC) and through our work with Action for Children, there was a need for more high-quality early childcare providers in our neighborhoods. We also realized that there was an interest among women living in these neighborhoods to develop the skills to host these early childhood centers themselves.

About the same time, Sandy Stroot, interim chair of teaching and learning, and alumna Rhonda Johnson, ’78 MA Education, had a conversation about the need for more licensed early childhood educators in Columbus City Schools preschool classrooms. They sketched a model on what has become the “infamous napkin.” In the meantime, EHE piloted a model at the SFC funded by Barbara Seimer to train our first handful of Weinland Park educators. We learned a lot in the process.

Independent of the work above, Jane Weichel, director for SFC’s community programs and engagement, obtained a $16.5 million Early Headstart Partnership Pilot project grant from the United States Department of Education. EHE coordinates this major project through the SFC, linking 11 childcare/preschools together throughout the city along with many home providers.

The aim of the Early Headstart Partnership is to develop state-of-the-art childcare and early learning experiences for low-income children from birth to age 3, along with health care, social services and workforce development for their parents. SFC staff member Mihaela Gugui is conducting the evaluation. 

Building upon our experience in both of these programs, and with encouragement from the Mayor’s Office, Ohio State was able to knit our efforts into a partner scholarship program that starts with the completion of a Child Development Associate (CDA) certificate from Action for Children.

After gaining the certificate that is worth 15 college credits, it is then transferred to Columbus State to obtain an Associate degree, and finally transferred to our college to complete a bachelor’s degree. 

I’m pleased and proud to recognize our faculty in the Department of Teaching and Learning, in the Human Development and Family Sciences program area and in Associate Dean Bryan Warnick’s Office for Curriculum, who have worked very hard over the past year to design an articulation agreement with Columbus State to make this pipeline possible. 

In addition, they have designed an entirely new degree to serve community education programs. These efforts will also increase the diversity within our teacher preparation program.

If we are lucky, we will be able to admit the first students into the teacher preparation program this Fall 2016 semester. 

The commitment of $3.9 million in scholarship funding came from President Michael V. Drake’s office. It will support up to 20 students per cohort for 5 years, along with additional advising support. 

I like to describe this program as one that is by Columbus, for Columbus, with Columbus. 

This program will help thousands of Columbus youngsters gain the kind of start they need to succeed in school and in life, by providing them with high quality learning experiences during their most important years of brain growth and development. 

We are grateful to the entire village that worked together to bring this dream into fruition.

Application information

Are you interested in applying for one of the College of Education and Human Ecology’s 100 scholarships for early childhood educators? Please contact Jo’Vanna Zanders at zanders.3@osu.edu or (614)292-2825.

Since I traveled over spring break this year, I’m sharing two books this time around

As often happens in airports, I experienced a long wait. I found myself in an airport without any TVs, which I thought was odd right before Super Tuesday.

I settled myself down in the gate lounge and observed a crying child, a family going to Hawaii, a Magic Johnson sportswear shop, a random man trying to pick up a blonde, and a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf shop.

There was not much else there except a bathroom with broken faucets and empty soap dispensers.

But during my wait, I was changed for having read, “Station Eleven,” by Emily St. John Mandel.

You will be changed as well after reading this highly original novel.

 
I hung onto all the words, the tattoos, the mass of humanity staring at their phones and valued them all more than ever before.

It takes you from the present to the future and back again, deepening our appreciation for everything from refrigeration to Shakespeare. Mandel didn’t get everything right, but go with the flow and you will be richly rewarded.

My second book was also fiction and profoundly moving.

Raptors, a bird of prey, such as an eagle, hawk or falcon, have always stirred me. I have never considered before what falconers have to do to capture, raise and train a bird, or the nature of that particular kind of human-animal bond.

In “H is for Hawk,” Helen MacDonald threw herself into the challenge with the same intensity and motivation that Cheryl Strayed did when she walked the Pacific Crest Trail. This book is also beautifully written and I will always remember some of her lines.

For example, when describing small birds in a field, she said “they’re strangely like a 16^th century sleeve sewn with pearls.”

This book does what great literature is supposed to do. It calls the reader to ask and somehow answer what it means to be human?

 
To win and lose, to grieve, to lose and find oneself, to locate a purpose for our heads and hearts and hands.

I invite you to spend time with each of these reads.

I’ve just completed another amazing book, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” by Bryan Stevenson.

It has kept me up for two nights straight and I won’t stop thinking about it for years.

Stevenson is an attorney who has given his life to defending the poor, the indigent and the forgotten. Many of whom have been punished for crimes they did not commit or punished in ways that are cruel and unusual for crimes they did commit.

The seasoned lawyer not only explores and reports on the ugliness of death row, but he actually got innocents off of death row. And, he took a case all the way to the Supreme Court to win a judgment of unconstitutionality for 13- and 14-year-olds who had received life imprisonment sentences.

Stevenson is not making himself out as a hero (though he is one). In fact, he writes with humility. He writes to educate us all about the need for social justice and the difficult reality of what it takes to make it happen.

He taught me a lot:

• About the ways media coverage of civil rights work has been “chilled” by law suits
• The numbers and reasons for an increase of women in prison
• Introduced me to the concept of the “prison-industrial complex”
• Shared the unbelievable mercy extended by former convicts for the injustices they have had to endure.

It is an impressive read and would make an outstanding choice for a first-year student experience program. I recommend it highly.