When senior Allesandra Tortora found that there was a class dedicated to learning about early childhood care and the behavior of children, she knew she wanted to take this class. ”I’ve always wanted to be an elementary school teacher,” Tortora said, “so I thought this was a great opportunity.” She is now part of the Morgan Munchkins, a program where children from the ages of 3-5 come to Morgan from 12:30 to 2:00 and are taught by the class of Early Childhood Education 1001 (ECE).
The Morgan Munchkins is a full-year program that starts in late autumn and has been run by Susan Murphy for more than five years and teaches students teacher-level skills throughout this program, “it helps teenagers develop skills like patience and other skills you think a teacher would need,” said Murphy. Students learn “how to create a lesson plan, how to not take kids’ behavior personally, how to know that you might plan something that doesn’t go the way you want to, even though you put a lot of time into it,” said Murphy.
Students can take this program if they have completed Intro to Early childhood. It helps a lot if the students have done a lot of babysitting, or they’ve worked in camps in the summer. Before the program starts in late October, Murphy helps the student with setting up plans and lessons, bringing in supplies and helping the students.
Mostly twice a week, the pre-schoolers come in at around 12:30, during G period depending on the student’s schedule and when they have H period. “Sometimes we do coloring, play with block playing or do circle time,” said Tortora. The students act as teachers, working on coming up with lesson plans and keeping everything ready for class. “We have to get our lesson plan two days in advance,” said Tortora, “and each day is a different theme. Last time our theme was turkeys for Thanksgiving, so we did like a cute hand turkey, and we colored it and put feathers on it.”
This program is held in a big classroom that is divided by a one way window, “group one teaches, while group two is in the other room, and we observe behavior concerns,” said Ithai Zelaya, a junior here at Morgan. “If a kid is being mean or throwing a tantrum, we write those down.” During the class, there are six children who are taught by four students.
Even though some people may think that dealing with kids is hard, for many of these students it was never a problem. “The group of kids we have – it’s a great group of kids; they’re very respectful,” said Zelaya, “It’s a happy place, and it’s good to, like, spend time with the kids,” Zelaya said.
Every day, the students work hard to make the fun lesson plans for the kids to enjoy, giving them the experience of being a teacher. “We teach the little kids about science, math and just with their motor skills,” said Nathaloe Avilia-Hernandez, a junior who, when first heard that Morgan offered this course, decided to take this class as she was wanting to pursue becoming a preschool teacher.
The Morgan Munchkin, as well as Intro to Early Childhood and ECCE, are a great way to help students who want to work with children in the future, as it teaches them how a child might react, behave, and show their emotions.
