My First Parent Meeting

On Friday, October 10th, I visited the Carrollton Early Childhood PTA at Holy Covenant Methodist Church. It was an amazing experience, and all of the parents were extremely friendly and helpful. I gave a brief presentation about the HIPPY model and my goal to start a HIPPY program in Carrollton. I passed out a flier I made called “The 1-2-3’s of HIPPY”, which listed the philosophy, goals, model and benefits of HIPPY, and asked that anyone who was interested in the program and in school readiness sign up for my mailing list. School readiness and parent involvement are so important for pre-k children, and I’m excited about the HIPPY model and getting a program in Carrollton started. And that can only happen if parents are interested and want it! And from the number of parents that signed up for my mailing list, parents do want it! Exciting!

They also invited me to their 18th Annual Silent Auction on Friday, November 14th, which will be held to raise money for their amazing organization. The CECPTA then uses 100% of the money raised to promote the welfare of area children and their families through parent education, children’s programs, community outreach and family activities. Sounds like a really fun event!

If anyone would like further information about the Carrollton Early Childhood PTA, their website is http://www.cecpta.org .

And Last But Not Least...

I've given a little information about HIPPY and about Special Care & Career Services, so it's only fitting that I should also mention the third organization I'm affiliated with: AmeriCorps. At the end of August, AmeriCorps sent me to Denver for a pre-service orientation, where they taught me about what it means to be a "Vista", and explained the overall goal of the AmeriCorps Vista program.

AmeriCorps Vista is the national service program of the Corporation for National & Community Service that is specifically geared towards fighting poverty. So every single Vista's overall goal in the back of their minds is to alleviate poverty, meaning it was important for me to try and understand how my role with HIPPY tied in. Admittedly, at first I didn't really understand how my job at HIPPY was going to fight poverty, but it became clearer as the orientation went on.

So here's yet another way HIPPY can benefit a community!!! Exciting! Many parents don't know how to get their kids ready for school in terms of literacy skills and exposure to learning, resulting in their child failing in school. This can potentially have a domino effect, and dig a hole which the child cannot pull him or herself out of, causing them to get further and further behind in their education. Additionally, the Home Instructors are given an extremely valuable opportunity to obtain job skills, and a college scholarship- a chance to lift themselves out of poverty if they had fallen into it.
I also met some great people at the PSO, and it was amazing to be around so many community service oriented young minds! It's amazing to know that so many are dedicated to fighting poverty and helping their community in such unique ways.

Here's a picture of me and some of the wonderful Vista's I met at the PSO- I know they're all going to do brilliant work in their communities!!!

Rachel, Lakeshia, Beth, Me, Tina @ Hard Rock Cafe in Denver

If you want to learn more about AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps Vista, please visit http://www.americorps.org/ Tell them I sent you ;)

Shout Out to Special Care and Career!

I really shouldn't go any further without giving a shout out to Special Care and Career Services, the agency that's sponsoring me and giving me office space and support this year. They're so great! Special Care and Career Services is a non-profit organization that serves people with disabilities. Their Early Childhood Intervention program provides services for children aged 0 to 3 with developmental delays and/or disabilities. Their Supported Employment program helps students with cognitive disabilities transition from high school to the work force, and also helps any other adults with cognitive disabilities find and keep a job. These are such important programs, and they positively affect the lives of hundreds of children and adults in our community every year.
Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) serves north Dallas communities including Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Coppell, Irving, Addison, and parts of Dallas and Lewisville. They provide a FREE (absolutely free! Can you believe it?) in-home evaulation to every single child (birth to 3 yrs) in these communities, to try and detect any sign of a developmental delay or disability and to start treatment right away. After the in-depth screening and evaluation process, on-staff experts provide speech, physical and occupational therapy and instruction to the children and their primary caregivers either in the child’s home or daycare facility.
Plus, I am especially grateful to Paula Tarver, who really pushed SCCS to help Texas HIPPY by housing me here. Without her work, I wouldn't be here at Special Care and Career! She has taught me so much about ECI and about the community I'm working in. And thanks to Carol Egusquiza, who has also been showing me the ropes around ECI!
Supported Employment Services (SES) is another program here at Special Care and Career Services. Employment specialists work with individuals with cognitive disabilities to match them to meaningful jobs in companies needing their skills. Clients of Supported Employment often need help finding a job in the community that fits well with both their own needs and with the needs of employers. With thorough assessment and job development, on-the-job training and continued support, the Supported Employment program assures an optimal placement for both client and employer.
What an amazing program! I've been tagging along with some staff members to a few client meetings, and let me tell you first hand that they do an amazing job! Thanks especially to Stephanie Agnew, Roberta Bower, and Helen Robinson for teaching me the ins and outs of SES (mind you, while simultaneously having to get all of their work done!!). All of the staff here at Special Care and Career Services have been so enormously helpful, and the director Cathy Packard asks me all the time if I need anything or if she can do anything to help me with my project. I'm so lucky to be so supported, both from Texas HIPPY and from Special Care and Career!!

If you want to learn more about Early Childhood Intervention or Supported Employment Services here at Special Care and Career Services, please go to their website at www.specialcarecareer.org or just ask me!

You're moving to Texas to be a HIPPY?!

The title of this post is a direct quote from my mother upon learning that I might be moving to Dallas to take a job with Texas HIPPY. So now that I'm here in Dallas (specifically Carrollton, a suburb north of Dallas) let me explain a little bit about the HIPPY program, a program so awesome that I've volunteered a year of my life to it!
HIPPY is an acronym (phew!) for Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters. It's a mouthful, but when you think about it, it's a great way to explain a complex program in a simple way. It is essentially, as its name suggests, a home-based school readiness program for children aged 3-5 in which home-instructors utilize role-play of curriculum with parents, who in turn teach the curriculum to their children. HIPPY teaches parents to become their child's first teacher, and empowers them to instill a love of learning in their children, strengthening the whole family unit in the process. In short, the process is thus: a HIPPY coordinator trains HIPPYCorps home instructors on developmentally age appropriate curriculum, the home instructors then role-play curriculum with HIPPY parents in their home, and then the parents teach the curriculum to their children.
I want to talk a little bit about just how beneficial this program is to all of the participants. I could go on and on about the logistics of the program, but I think the benefits of HIPPY are really what make the program so unique, and so impressive! The benefits of the HIPPY program to the community are really four-fold. First and foremost, the children benefit greatly from the home instruction that takes place under the HIPPY model. School-readiness for pre-school youngsters is the most important goal of HIPPY, and the curriculum included provides age-appropriate materials for children aged 3-5. When the time comes for children to begin school, they have already been exposed to the learning process, and can more readily adapt to an education-centered environment. The HIPPY model reduces the perception that the classroom and the learning process are foreign entities, and increases the perception that school and home are both venues for learning. Additionally, there are positive effects on the child through the growth and development of the family unit. Children become closer to their parent or parents, and start to look up to them as a role model and as their guide. They recognize that the parent is not just someone who fetches them food and cleans up after them, but as someone with knowledge to impart and with wisdoms to share. The HIPPY model strengthens the bond between parent and child.
As many benefits as there are to the children through the HIPPY process, there are equally as many benefits for the parents. As previously mentioned, it strengthens the family unit, which is mutually beneficial to parent and child. Additionally though, being able to mentor and teach their children really empowers the parent and makes them feel like someone worthy of their child's affection, and worthy of being looked up to. This in turn boosts the parents' confidence level, producing a positive attitude which can easily spill over into other areas of their family and professional lives. The group meetings also provide a venue in which parents can share ideas and insights, contributing to their feelings of success and confidence. Additionally, parents have an opportunity to meet other parents like themselves, and friendships are formed, building lasting connections and relationships within the community.
The HIPPY model also positively effects schools in the community (which is a primary reason HIPPY is more often than not situated at a school district or with several individual schools). In quantitative terms, the HIPPY program has directly contributed to higher test scores of children who went through the program, and teachers overwhelmingly deemed their students who were in HIPPY "ready for school". The HIPPY program also leads more parents to be involved in their child's education following the conclusion of the program. HIPPY parents are more likely to volunteer at their child's school, join a PTA or other organization, and/or take an interest in their child's education in some other way.
And as the fourth group positively affected by the HIPPY program, the home-instructors themselves receive a number of benefits for their contributions to the HIPPY process. HIPPYCorps members receive the Segal Education Award (an AmeriCorps scholarship of $2,363), which encourages them to seek higher education following their service, which in turn will help them become that much more employable. Additionally, the opportunity to be a home-instructor is often their first job, and provides excellent job training and the experience needed to transition into the working world. The home-instructors not only improve their own future through education and job experience, they become role models for the HIPPY parents and the community at large. They are also provided with income, and receive all the other benefits that come along with being an AmeriCorps member (such as loan forbearance, health care, etc.). Home-instructors can stay in their position for a limited term of 3 years, in order to continuously provide this opportunity to the community.

By George I think they've got it! They really have thought of everything, which is going to make it so much easier for me to complete my mission here this year. It's always easier to promote something you really care about and believe in, and that's definitely how I feel about HIPPY!

So I told my Mom all of this, and needless to say, she felt a little better about her baby moving off to Texas to work for those HIPPY folks! A happy ending indeed.

If you want to learn more about Texas HIPPY or HIPPY USA, either ask me! Or go to www.unt.edu/hippy for our state program site, or http://www.hippyusa.org/ for our national site.

It's About Time

Well, it's about time I learned how to blog! Let me start out by introducing myself, and explaining what my little self is doing in the giant state of Texas.

I'm Sarah, bright-eyed idealist, fresh out of college and ready to tackle the world! I've lived an Army Brat life, so when I finished my undergraduate degree at Florida International University (in International Relations with a Certificate in European Studies), what can I say, I was restless and ready for a change. I thought about my options: go straight to Grad school, find a real job, or take a year off and do community service. I think they key factor in making my decision was what I said earlier: that I was "ready for a change". And I wanted a change not just in my life, but to inspire a change (dare I say I wanted to change the world?) So the choice was clear; community service it is!

I learned about AmeriCorps Vista when I was in my "I want to join the Peace Corps" phase. A friend suggested it as a less-likely-to-contract-a-fatal-disease-but-still-serving-in-a-big-way option. So I looked into it and applied for a few VISTA positions, really on a whim. Almost immediately, I got a call from Texas HIPPY, and David told me a little bit about their program and what they were trying to do in North Texas. I went to the website and read about the HIPPY model, and within a few hours I was sold. Here was an important and much needed cause that I could really get into, and meanwhile love what I'm doing (also known as a "win-win" or "jackpot" scenerio). So when they offered me the job, I jumped on it! And started counting down the days until I would load up my big orange car (Frau Cow) and head west to the Big D and to a new chapter of my life.