Family Child Care RULES: Occupy Our Preschools, Please! ? One ...

The Occupy movement is very much about making noises ? complaining noises about where the faults in justice lie. The systems that serve people in need are not very fair: capitalism doesn?t work; government isn?t helping to equalize the imbalance; there really isn?t enough charity to get change moving.? So far these movements have stayed pretty focused on making the noise. Solutions are presumed to arise from the ashes.

But it may be possible to turn the Occupy phenomenon on its head by putting together a twist that celebrates the idea of the positive power of visibility. Early childhood educational programs ? particularly those that are home-centered and nurturing, like family child care facilities ? actually work. They help get children and families ready for a lifetime of learning. Unfortunately, too often people either haven?t figured this out yet or don?t know what to do with the knowledge even when they get it. Clearly, we cannot just tag more programs on to our schools, for example, since the schools are running on empty and there are more than enough people who have given up on the concept of public education in exchange for targeted and even distance or remote technology learning. So what can or should one do with early childhood learning steps in our own backyard?

We should occupy them, of course. Which is why, in the spring of 2013, a collaboration of family child care programs in the northern California region will be moving to share with the world, via a media event, an Occupy Our Preschool project. The event hopes to draw attention to how many exceptionally quality preschool and child care sites already exist, and the struggles they face due to budget cutbacks and economic family challenges. I mean, really? How is a family expected to pay nearly as much per child per month as the family has to pay for rent for their home?

They cannot. And this means that even when we have the learning infrastructure and the desire of consumers to gain access to their promises, other obstacles get in the way. Learning justice cannot happen and there is no way to fundamentally celebrate just how fantastically family child care rules!

The founding agencies of the Occupy Our Preschool event have come together under the name of PreK2College to showcase alternatives. With any luck, this movement will be able to turn the idea of just making noise into an entrepreneurial model that makes the business of early childhood education in family child care settings profitable in a money and social responsibility way.

Because the project is still in its planning stages, please click over to the site and offer us advice. Our hope includes using this effort to uncover new, viable revenue generating streams.

We?d love to begin collecting a list of agencies that want to be involved. If you care for early ed, why not get a head start by drawing attention to all the positives that come from occupying our preschools? Please.

Source: http://onepagewriter.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/family-child-care-rules-occupy-our-preschools-please/

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