Kindergarten Kickstart
A joyful, nurturing foundation for school and an innovative research-to-practice bridge.
http://kindergartenkickstart.org
Project Summary
Kindergarten Kickstart is an innovative research-based, summer pre-K program for children in Middletown, CT who could benefit from extra preschool experience before beginning kindergarten. Through a partnership between university-based research labs, Middletown Public Schools, and local community organizations, Kickstart aims to bridge the research-to-practice gap and improve participants' school readiness skills through a short-term, high-impact, low-cost preschool program.
Project Details
Kindergarten Kickstart was founded in 2012 as a partnership between Wesleyan University's Psychology Department and Office of Community Service, Macdonough School, and the North End Action Team of Middletown, CT. Kickstart aims to help low-income rising kindergartners with little to no previous preschool experience develop school readiness skills. The program provides a high-quality, high-impact summer preschool intervention at low cost by leveraging existing resources: Wesleyan-community partnerships, developmental science researchers, and undergraduate students. Each of Kickstart's two classrooms is led by three Wesleyan students and one certified supervisory teacher. Kickstart boasts a high teacher-student ratio, parental engagement initiatives, and a play-based curriculum.
Since its inception, Kickstart has existed as a research-based program, whereby every classroom practice is driven by current developmental science findings. However, the program's most recent iteration (Summer 2015) went a step further, piloting three interventions on domains of school readiness (numeracy, executive function, and socio-emotional skills), developed in university-based research labs. After four successful years, we are ready to expand Kickstart's role as an "incubator" of research-based interventions, transforming Kickstart from a community non-profit organization into a true social enterprise. In addition to implementing multiple pre-developed interventions, all Wesleyan students teaching with Kickstart will develop, pilot, and launch a new research-based literacy intervention.
Thus, Kickstart will serve as both (1) a bridge between academic labs and educational practitioners and (2) a setting in which Wesleyan students will simultaneously occupy the roles of teacher, researcher, and entrepreneur.
The Social Problem
Early childhood education helps children develop cognitive and socio-emotional skills that prepare them for success in school and in life. In particular, low-income children, who have lower levels of school readiness skills than their higher-income counterparts, derive large benefits from high-quality preschool programs. 5 of Middletown, Connecticut’s 8 elementary schools are Title 1 schools, meaning that at least 40% of students at those schools are from low-income families.
A less widely-known problem is the research-to-practice gap in education. Research is not being effectively incorporated into most classrooms. Many universities and education research centers do not have well-developed methods for disseminating research to practitioners. Barriers like limited backgrounds in research prevent many teachers from getting involved in the research process or accessing research findings; in fact, most educators receive information about research results from the media or other third party sources.
The Anticipated Impact
Kickstart has already had a significant positive impact on students' levels of school readiness. We expect to replicate and improve on this outcome this summer and in future years.
Kickstart students' scores on the DIAL-4, a broad measure of school readiness, administered during Week 1 and Week 4 of each program.
The central goal of this proposal is to support Kickstart teachers’ entrepreneurial effort in developing Kickstart’s “incubator” model through:
(1) developing, piloting, and launching a new literacy intervention, integrating strengths of existing successful programs with current research and ensuring its feasibility as a classroom tool. The Kickstart teachers will share the intervention with other teachers in Middletown before marketing it to a broader audience.
(2) providing a mechanism to help developmental researchers translate research-based interventions into practical educational settings. Kickstart teachers will implement the interventions, create fine-grained adjustments and modifications within their classrooms, and provide feedback and concrete suggestions to the researchers, who can modify them accordingly before marketing them to schools. Thus, Kickstart's work will impact the thousands of students in classrooms across the country who will receive these new interventions.
Grant Allocation
Kindergarten Kickstart’s material costs are low; most of our annual $20,000 budget is needed to pay our Wesleyan teachers a stipend of $2,000. This Seed Grant will (1) help us support our six teacher-researchers as they take on the new role of entrepreneur (each will receive $600 from the Seed Grant, for a total of $3,600) and (2) fund our new research-based literacy intervention ($1,400 for all necessary materials).
Your Competitors
Many pre-K programs across the country, including The Goddard Schools and The UCLA Lab School, aim to foster students' school readiness through play-based learning and research-based practice. However, Kindergarten Kickstart is one of the few programs that incorporates all of the following features:
-specifically targets low-income children with little to no preschool experience
-is offered at low cost in order to be accessible to the target population
-is led by university students who receive high-level training in developmental science prior to the start of the program
-partners with local public school staff and community organizations and
-tests research-based interventions targeting a variety of developmental domains in collaboration with multiple academic labs
Additionally, Kindergarten Kickstart fills a need in the Middletown community by providing a high-quality summer preschool program to children who would otherwise have little to no preschool experience before starting kindergarten.
Team Members
Stephanie Blumenstock
sblumenstock@wesleyan.edu
Major: Psychology & French
Class of 2016
Stephanie has worked with Kindergarten Kickstart since 2014. She is currently writing a thesis assessing its outcomes and will remain connected to Kickstart after leaving Wesleyan. Kickstart has shaped her Wesleyan experience by ingraining in her a passion for the connections between psychology and education. In the future, she plans to become a teacher and continue working with translational research. At Wesleyan, Stephanie has worked as a tutor for the Office of the Community Service and has served as a leader of the Jewish Community and of two student-run singing groups.
Meg Narwold
mnarwold@wesleyan.edu
Major: Neuroscience
Class of 2016
Meg joined the Kindergarten Kickstart team in
2015. Through her experience at Wesleyan
University tutoring with Upward Bound and Let’s Get Ready, as well as being team captain for the co-ed Ultimate Frisbee team, Meg has found her passion in education and gained leadership experience. As a consequence of her experience with Kickstart, she is writing a thesis on executive functions in early childhood education, which will be a resource for future teacher-researchers. Kindergarten Kickstart is the key catalyst for her discovery of wanting a career in communicating findings between classroom teachers and researchers.
Natalie May
nmay@wesleyan.edu
Major: Psychology & Science and Society
Class of 2018
Natalie became involved with Kickstart in 2015 and really enjoyed having the opportunity to investigate new ways of implementing experimental enrichment activities in the classroom. She is very interested in continuing to help Kickstart grow as a program by working to secure resources that will allow it to further develop its research interventions through continued testing and results analysis. In addition, Natalie has worked through Wesleyan's Office of Community Service as a tutor for the Woodrow Wilson Society and Traverse Square and she is currently involved in community programs for promoting reproductive justice, such as the Wesleyan Doula Project and the Clinic Escorts program.
Key Partners
Dr. Anna Shusterman, Associate Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University, developer of Wesleyan Preschool Math intervention
Dr. Patricia Charles, Superintendent of Middletown Public Schools
Dr. Susan Rivers, Deputy Director of Yale's Center for Emotional Intelligence, developer of RULER (socio-emotional intervention)
Dr. Megan McClelland, Professor at Oregon State University, developer of Circle Time games (executive function intervention)
Amy Waterman, Coordinator of Middletown Family Resource Center, former elementary school teacher
Izzi Greenberg, Director of the Middlesex Coalition for Children
Traymeshia Story, Kindergarten Kickstart Parent Liaison, parent of 2014 Kickstart student
Taylor DeLoach '13, founding member/teacher of Kindergarten Kickstart (2012-13), current teacher at Alma de Mar Charter School
Sydney Lewis '14, founding member/teacher of Kindergarten Kickstart (2012-13), current student at Teachers College, Columbia University