Education Starts Early
Monday Magazine - Victoria
By: Matt Simmons
August 13, 2008

B.C. is giving kids a Strong Start

These days, kids jump into school early—in some cases, before they can even physically jump. The push to get children involved at such a young age is to get them ready for the school system. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that little ones love an environment where they can put their hands on a hundred different things in a matter of minutes. Today’s answer to more costly programs like Montessori seems to be Strong Start. Strong Start BC is a public service for parents of preschoolers. Essentially it’s a free, drop-in kindergarten for toddlers with parents in attendance, housed in elementary schools. With its circle-time, arts and crafts, story-time, puzzles, games, and even some run-around-in-the-gym time, it’s an educational program that works. And in the fall of 2008, Victoria is getting five more locations.

At George Jay Elementary, Wendy Legge facilitates the program. The kids love her. They show it by giving her big hugs when they arrive or as they go, or just whenever the mood takes them. Legge’s Strong Start room is filled with a selection of quality toys, arts and crafts supplies and a little library. The walls are colourfully decorated with finger-painted pieces and past experiments in messy, crafty exercises. Apart from circle-time—when everyone gathers to listen to a story or sing a song—and snack-time, the mornings are unstructured. There aren’t many rules at Strong Start, but everything is held together by a few basic values: healthy food, healthy behaviour, literacy and so on. This implicit value system means that kids come out of Strong Start with social skills under their belts. And that means, when they first go to school, they can already interact with their peers in a reasonable way.

“Socialization for parent and child is the most important thing,” says Legge. “Also, building a connection with the elementary school that your child may attend will make for an easier transition when it comes time for kindergarten.” Equally important is the way in which Strong Start promotes parent-child interaction. “I know that a child’s strongest teachers [are] his or her own parents,” continues Legge. “This program gives tools to the parents who come and really empowers them to take on that first teacher role.”

Ida Chong, MLA for Oak Bay and Gordon Head, agrees. “[Strong Start] allows caregivers to be with [their kids] and interact with them,” she says. Chong touts Strong Start and its envisioned expansion to over 400 centres across the province by 2010 as an amazing achievement by the Ministry of Education. She goes on to say that Strong Start is building on the successes of other programs like Ready, Set, Learn and Success By Six. “All of this is about getting them that early start,” she says. “I read a statistic somewhere that said 40 percent of adults [here] are illiterate. Did we forget about early learning somewhere along the way?”

Colleen Hobson also champions the early-learning cause as both executive director of Saanich Neighbourhood Place and leadership chair of PLAY—Partnership in Learning and Advocacy in Young Children. “I always get that wrong,” she laughs as she stumbles over the mouthful of their rarely used full title. Recently, PLAY conducted a survey called the Early Learning Awards. It asked parents a variety of questions about the city’s programs and facilities. Strong Start was voted as the best free or inexpensive service in Victoria, alongside Beacon Hill Petting Zoo and the public library system.

It’s indisputably a good program; however, there is another side to the story. The Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC (CCCABC) note that public funding to licensed child-care facilities has dropped drastically since the beginning of 2007. This means that single-parent families or families where both parents have to work are struggling to find affordable child care. “There is an inherent inequity in the way early learning and care programs in this province are structured and delivered,” says Susan Harney, chairperson of CCCABC. “The problem is that working parents are required to pay huge sums for access to the early learning and care services their children need, while parents who can attend drop-in programs with their children are able to access early learning at no charge.” It’s a good point.

Its only drawback, from Hobson’s point of view, is that Victoria locations overlap with existing similar services, reflecting a lack of community consultation. But both the CCCABC and Hobson agree that, whatever its shortcomings, Strong Start is still a step in the right direction. “I think it’s wonderful that the Ministry has recognized the importance of early learning,” says Hobson.

And kids really do love it. The kids at Strong Start have this wide-eyed, starry look on their faces as they wander around, probably overloading on the possibilities that so many toys and books and arts and crafts and other kids offer. It’s engrossing to watch them as they play, learn to share and communicate, getting excited about being at school—and getting the healthy start to life they need. …