Getting an early start

Kaylee Percival, 18, recently graduated from University High School with the hope of someday being a kindergarten or first-grade teacher.

She has a head start – she’s been taking classes since her sophomore year in the school’s child development and teaching academy programs.

Through the Career and Technical Education program, Percival already has 21 college credits to put toward her education at Spokane Falls Community College next year before she moves on to a four-year college for her teaching degree. Taking the classes at U-Hi means she is saving almost $1,700 in tuition.

Rhonda Austing, the teacher of the program, said Percival used what she had learned in the classes and turned it into her senior project –she teaches swimming lessons at Park Road Pool to 6 and 7 year olds. There were students who were afraid to put their faces underwater and she thought about the learning styles she learned about in class. The styles of learning depend on the individual student.

“Reading her senior project made me cry,” Austing said of Percival.

The first child development class students can take at the high school teach the students about child development from fertilization through age 5. It also gives the students training to achieve their STARS Basic Child Care Center Training Certification. This certification is required by the state if an employee is going to work in a child care center. Ordinarily, this certification would require 20 hours of training and would cost the students almost $100. Through the program at U-Hi, the students can get certified for free – the fee is waived by the state, much like the fees for the college credits are waived.

Austing said the STAR certification doesn’t just help the students if they want to work in a child care center. She has students who have a leg up when they apply at places like Chuck E. Cheese and one student received a dollar-an-hour raise at his job for earning his certification.

“Employers are (saying), ‘You already have an ace in the hole,’” Austing said.

When the students move on to the second and third child development classes, they get a chance to work with children and apply what they’ve learned in class.

Austing works with three pre-schools, Trinity Church and Ponderosa, Chester, University elementary schools and the Early Learning Center in the Central Valley School District. The students travel to one of those schools each day to work with children. Austing said the students must treat the classes like a job – they must be on time, fill out a time card and get performance reviews.

Debbie Volkman, a teacher at the Early Learning Center, said the program not only teaches high school students how to teach, but it helps her as well, since the student provides an extra set of hands.

In a recent class, Volkman had two U-Hi students in her class, helping with story time, assisting students put puzzles together and corralling children when it was time to listen to the teachers.

Austing said the students who work off-site must be at least sophomores, since they are in charge of arranging their own transportation. If the students can’t drive, Austing is mindful about where to place them and the students must chip in for gas if they are traveling with another student.

“I don’t keep them out if they can’t drive,” she said.

Austing also travels to every work site a few times a week to see how her students are faring.

The district offers a similar program at Central Valley High School that isn’t as large.

The program also has a strong connection with SFCC. Austing said that many of her students attend education classes at that school and are already ahead of other students just entering the program.

“These programs offer students experience in college-level expectations and help build confidence that they can do college-level work,” Austing said.

In Percival’s case, she won a Washington Award for Vocational Excellence Scholarship for her work in the program. The scholarship pays for two full years of private or public college education at a school in Washington. She’ll attend SFCC this fall and hopes to attend Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho.