Video: Empowering Parents and Caregivers in Oakland

It’s common knowledge that parents are a child’s first
teacher. In collaboration with other family members, friends, and neighbors,
it’s often parents who provide the care and education for young children prior
to entry into formal schooling in kindergarten.

 While access to pre-K for three- and four-year-olds is slowly
increasing nationally, 57 percent of four-year-olds and 84 percent of
three-year-olds still don’t
have access to state-funded pre-K or Head Start, meaning
that it’s up to parents, caregivers, and the communities in which they live to
help equip young children with the tools necessary to be successful once they
finally enter the schoolhouse doors for the first time.

 In Oakland, the Lotus Bloom Family Resource
Center creates physical spaces and develops educational
opportunities that enable adults (parents and other caregivers) and young
children aged 0-5 to experience learning together. The goal of the center is to
increase the school readiness of children prior to the beginning of
kindergarten by connecting with families as early as possible. The following
video, produced by New America and featured in our new multimedia guidebook, Transforming the Early
Education Workforce, highlights the work the center performs in collaboration
with Oakland Unified School District:

As Angela Louie Howard, Executive Director of Lotus Bloom,
explains in the video, “We found out that a lot of children were coming into
elementary school with no preschool or early learning background.” Lotus Bloom
offers parent-child playgroups at elementary schools throughout Oakland Unified
School District to help young children develop important social-emotional and
academic skills and ensure they enter kindergarten ready to learn.

 As a result of these playgroups, “children are hearing more
language, many of them are coming in reading, they have the academic language
for instruction,” says Charles Miller, principal of Allendale Elementary
School. And because the children have been in a school environment alongside
their parents and caregivers the idea of starting formal schooling once they
reach the age of kindergarten doesn’t seem so intimidating.

New America’s new interactive
guidebook, which makes key takeaways from the
National Academy of Medicine’s 2015 report on the early childhood education
workforce more digestible and actionable, includes four additional videos
produced by New America, which you can find here.