New Tri-College Collaborative Advocates for Early Childhood Education
Contact: Susan Bennett-Armstead, 581-2418; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — Students from UMaine and Eastern Maine Community College recently joined forces to create a networking organization dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of giving very young children the best educational opportunities possible, even before they reach school age.
They began their advocacy with a message to the Maine legislature.
A child’s early years, up to age three, are critical for child development and can make a significant difference in how children continue to develop as they enter school, says Susan Bennett-Armistead, assistant professor of literacy in the College of Education and Human Development at UMaine and an adviser for the group.
With membership at about 80 students, with more from Husson University poised to join, the organization, the Early Childhood Organization (EChO), is the largest college-based early childhood education advocacy group in the nation, Bennett-Armistead was told by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Students formed the organization in February under the guidance of Bennett-Armistead and four UMaine colleagues, and two faculty members from Eastern Maine Community College.
EChO members want to raise awareness of the importance of early childhood education and create an active network among professionals working with young children and their parents with college students who eventually will join them in the field.
Bennett-Armistead says such a network will be novel, as social workers, elementary school teachers and nurses, and others involved with young children, often do not always enjoy coordinated professional support in the field. The students intend to change that by engaging a broader array of early childhood professionals in a series of information-sharing activities.
“One of the things we hope to do is have the next generation of early childhood professionals be interconnected,” says Bennett-Armistead, who advised a similar group when she was at Michigan State University.
Because of the unparalleled capacity for children to learn in the early years, early experiences should focus on quality interaction between adults and children, building their language and world knowledge, in addition to important social skills, says Bennett-Armistead.
“The one thing that has sort of taken the country’s imagination is the window between birth and age three,” she says. In that time a toddler’s brain develops faster and absorbs more information than at any other time in life. Between ages two and three, for instance, a child’s vocabulary, burgeons from about 50 words to more than 1,000, Bennett-Armistead says.
If children don’t receive quality education and childcare during that period, they miss an opportunity to take advantage of that special learning capacity. “Missed opportunities at that age are very hard to make up,” Bennett-Armistead says.
In an effort to improve childcare and pre-kindergarten educational opportunities in Maine, the students made more than 1,000 purple ribbons, each with a list of early childhood facts. They have been passing them out at UMaine, in home towns and, on April 22, handed over hundreds to state Rep. Adam Goode, a Democrat from Bangor, to pass out among members of the 124th Legislature in observance of the National Week of the Young Child, April 20-24.
Knowledge of early childhood issues could lead to more informed decisions by parents, policymakers and lawmakers when issues like insurance regulations for childcare providers, educational funding and anything else that affects children and families arise, they say.
The organization members also plan to do volunteer work with Spruce Run domestic violence project in Bangor, and are collecting books for the Ethiopia Reads project.
The other EChO faculty advisers include Mary Ellen Logue, Julie Dallamatter and Margo Brown from the College of Education and Human Development, and Deborah Rooks from the UMaine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies, with Cynthia Geaghan and Connie Ronco from EMCC.