ESL Student's Leadership Makes A Difference

On Monday, April 14th at 6:00 pm a contingent of CFNC children, parents, ESL students and staff, converged on City Hall to ask the City Council to allocate surplus money to the Children’s Fund so that CFNC could continue to provide much needed services to Alexandria's low-income residents.

Approximately 25 children and parents met at our main office to show their support of CFNC's commitment to children and families. CFNC staff planned to use taxicabs to transport everyone; however, Andrea Sierra Aguilar rallied everyone to carpool so that CFNC would not have to incur any expenses. Her leadership was a success, and parents who had cars transported others to and from the event.

Andrea Sierra Aguilar is one of my oldest continuing clients. I first met her in 2001 when I started working here. She had started ESL classes at the old Presidential Greens site. Through the years, she attended English classes, as she was able per her work schedule. At present, she has gained enough command of the English language to get a better position in her job, and to be able to volunteer at our Birchmere center in our preschool classes. Andrea is so proud of being able to give back that she even designed and wears a CFNC volunteer badge. Andrea is a perfect example of an immigrant woman’s desire to better herself and attain the American Dream.

by Blanca Leyva, Director of Family Support Services

Magic Moments

On Monday, May 12th 5th grade students from St. Stephens/St. Agnes performed a magic show for children at CFNC's Birchmere center. Enjoy the video of the American Flag trick and please forgive my shaky hands. Next time I will film from a steadier surface. For a small photo gallery of the magic show click here. The children absolutely loved the magic show, evident at the end of the short video! Thank you very much to all of the students. What a show!

A Normal Day at the Playground

We focus a lot on the educational benefits of quality preschool programming for children living in poverty (e.g. that kids from low-income families with preschool experience do better in school and ultimately in life than those who do not have the opportunity to attend preschool). However, it is also important to take time to highlight that children love preschool. They love learning. They love playing in a safe environment where they run around with abunch of children their age and scream! This is one of the things we provide to children on a daily basis that they may not othewise be able to partake in with the same sense of safety and adult supervision. Now that it is spring, we couldn't resist sharing with you how cute these kids are on our playground. For a web album with more pictures from a normal day at the playground click here. Enjoy!

Mom's Learning Too!

Ana Paniagua from El Salvador joined our ESL classes in September 2007. She has one daughter, Yosselyn, who is in one of CFNC's preschool classes. Anna tested as a beginning ESL Literacy student when she started ESL. That means that she could only understand a few isolated words, and extremely simple learned phrases. Her vocabulary was limited to a few isolated words and she had no control of grammar.

Anna has been coming to the ESL classes regularly after she drops her daughter off in the morning. She has gradually become more comfortable in English. She has started helping other students in the class. She has told me how she uses learned vocabulary with her daughter. She reads the books she has read in class with her. She sings nursery rhymes with her and she volunteers in her daughter’s class.

She volunteered to read an English children’s book in her daughter’s class. She had received the book through the Reading Connection which had given a reading workshop in our ESL class. She had learned how to use rhyming words when reading to a child. She did exactly that when she read the book in her daughter’s class. She also acted the story out and she asked the preschoolers questions. The children loved it and her daughter was beaming with pride (they are both pictured above).

After 60 hours of ESL instruction she took a post ESL test. She became a High Intermediate ESL which means that she can now understand simple learned phrases easily, and can participate in basic conversations in a few very routine social situations. She has now some control of basic grammar.

By Eugenie Ballering, ESL Instructor

What Does Success Smell Like?

Peggy Ashbrook, who developed our Preschool Science! program, recently taught CFNC kids to explore their sense of smell. She writes of this picture, "Children and teachers [are] gathering and recording the data from their activity: using their sense of smell to understand that people have different favorite smells."

For more pictures from our Preschool Science! program, click here.

It is an unfortunate truth that children living in poverty – particularly minority children – are less likely to excel in the fields of math and science and thus are less likely to have careers in math, science and technology. Early childhood programs must effectively engage children in math and science in order to close this achievement gap because, as the President of Chicago’s Erickson Institute argues, “the roots of later competence [in math and science] are established long before school age.”

Our Preschool Science! program ensures that our children have the pre-math and pre-science skills they will need. Preschool Science!, taught twice a month in every classroom, is designed to encourage our children to observe the details of the natural world, laying the foundation for their excitement of the discovery process and perception of themselves as young scientists. By participating in the Preschool Science! curriculum, the nearly 200 children who attend our programs will be prepared to succeed in the science education programs they will encounter in elementary school and beyond.