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Career center students get hands-on experience
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Neighbors | Shaiyla Hakeem .Mahoning County Career and Technical Centers' Christie Wright (left), Jolene Laughery, Stacy Perline, Alyssa Lude, Melissa Miller and Katherine Caradine read a story to kindergartners Dec. 1 at Market Street Elementary. They are all a part of MCCTC's Early Childhood Education program.
The Mahoning County Career and Technical Center’s Early Childhood Program has a newly established training activity, in collaboration with Market Street Elementary, which allows the high-schoolers to work with Chrys Ritter’s kindergarten class on a monthly basis.
MCCTC early childhood education teacher Julie Pagnotta said the center offers a day care where her students experience working with infants and preschoolers, but are limited to those age groups. Market Street Elementary provides them with additional training and experience that enriches their learning experience.
“It’s just a hands-on opportunity for the MCCTC students to work at the kindergarten level,” Pagnotta explained. “They learn to adapt the lessons and activities to the age group.”
The group of 14 students rotates out for each visit which allows some students to stay at the center in the preschool. They spend two hours, during their morning lab, at the elementary teaching and interacting with kindergartners. The students’ lesson plans correspond with what the kindergarten class is learning for the week. It consists of an interactive storytime, counting, a craft project and reinforcement for the alphabet letter they are learning about that specific day.
MCCTC career development coordinator Jackie Kuffel helped orchestrate the partnership of the two schools. Ritter, who switched from a second-grade teacher to teaching kindergarten this year, is acquainted with Kuffel and mentioned how challenging the transition was.
Since Kuffel was aware of the training given in MCCTC’s early childhood education program, she suggested the merge.
“They came to rescue me,” Ritter said. “There has been really nice activities and it is a different experience for the kids.”
Pagnotta said lesson planning is essential in childhood education, but it is hard to determine how well the plans will work without implementation. Beloit resident Jolene Laughery agrees with Pagnotta in saying things don’t always go as smoothly as planned.
“In the future when we have our own kindergarten class or preschool, we’re going to have to do stuff like this so it really gives us experience,” Laughery said.
Dec. 1 was MCCTC’s third visit to the school. The first visit was late October. They are looking to increase their visits from once a month to two.