Coretha Bynum-Dabney might not have spent 18 years of her life as a Head Start teacher had it not been for her son’s preschool teacher.
“I saw how patient that teacher was with him,” she said, now a lead teacher at Grace Hill’s Bethlehem Lutheran Head Start Center.
“She was a mother figure to all them. Whenever they had to close the school, my son would give me a fit about not going to school.”
There was something magical about the teacher that won over her son, Doney Dabney Jr., who still talks about that teacher at age 23. After volunteering with Head Start for years, Bynum-Dabney earned her first Head Start teaching position in October 1991.
“I thought, ‘She’s making a difference in my child, and I want to make a difference in someone else’s child,'” she said.
“I love to working with the three to five year olds. When I see the children, they still remember me. I know I’m making a difference.”
As the federally-funded Head Start program is designed to do, the teacher made an impact on Bynum-Dabney as much as she affected her son’s life. Aside from early childhood education, the program helps families get into school, housing, good nutritional habits and other resources. It has been motivating students and parents since 1965.
“They told me I can do what I want to do,” she said. “I can be what I want to be. So that’s what I did. I went back to school, and that’s how I got started.”
Earning her degree in early childhood education in 2003 was her proudest achievement, apart from her career working with children, she said. Since she graduated, she has been working at Grace Hill. And every year, she has received an outstanding teacher award.
On September 17, Bynum-Dabney will receive the PNC Bank Early Childhood Education Award at the St. Louis American Foundation’s Salute to Excellence in Education at America’s Center.
Education is everything
Bynum-Dabney and her six siblings are all products of Head Start education. They grew up in North St. Louis and O’Fallon. Her mother, Earnestine Dixson, worked in a bakery and raised them by herself with the philosophy: “If you don’t have education, you don’t have anything.”
The other bit of advice was: “If we fail the first time, keep trying and we’ll succeed,” Bynum-Dabney said. “That’s how she wanted her children to think, so I tell the children I’m working with the same thing.”
When her mother developed a chronic illness, her brother, Larry Bynum, became a strong force in urging her brothers and sisters to further their education. He was an insurance salesman at the time and seven years older than Coretha.
“He was set on us going to school,” she said. “He was at the school a lot, doing the things my mother would normally do. He was a really good big brother, the kind of brother anyone would love to have.”
He began to feel like he was the father of his siblings, she said.
At 20, he rented a building and opened up an after-school program for children on Hamilton Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.
“He didn’t want the children hanging out on the street,” she said.
He married his sweetheart, and together they had one son. Yet when he was 23, a disagreement erupted behind the after-school building. Larry went to break up the fight, and he was killed, she said. No one was convicted of his murder.
“I loved what he was doing. I figured it was going to get bigger where everyone could join in,” she said.
She keeps Larry in her heart every day, especially in her work.
“I know we can make a difference if we get out there and try, instead of sitting back and not doing anything,” she said.
Giving children a head start
In her 18 years of teaching, her classrooms have largely been filled with African-American students. In her experience, African-American children need more attention when it comes to certain areas of their development. The children are often not given the help they need at home, she said. And through the program, the students receive that formative head start they need to be successful.
“They just go through so much in the home environment, and I consider that all when they come here,” she said.
“I don’t know what my kids have gone through the night before. I just try to treat them like every day is going to be my last with them. So I give them my all.”
It shows. Some of her students have made heroic acts in light of her lessons.
One day a parent came up to Bynum-Dabney and said that she could have been killed had it not been for daughter calling 911, which was one of the lessons Bynum-Dabney adamantly focused on in class.
The child had called 911 when her mother was having a disagreement with her partner.
“The mother told me, ‘I may not even be here if you had not taught her that,'” she said.
A priceless necessity
At Head Start, the students improve their social skills and academic capability, she said.
This year, about 33 states decreased funding to K-12 and early education, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a thinktank based in Washington D.C.
In July, the U.S. House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations subcommittee approved a version of the FY 2011 appropriations bill, putting Head Start programs at $8.1 billion, up from 2010’s $7.2 billion. If Congress passes the bill, $900 million more would go towards Head Start programs.
Bynum-Dabney said early education, particularly Head Start, should be the last thing budget item considered for cuts.
“A lot of children wouldn’t get this opportunity if we didn’t have Head Start,” she said.
“The vocabulary that the students leave with out of this program is unbelievable. And if they are just sitting at home, they wouldn’t get those skills. Their gross motor skills, their nutrition – they need all of this to become a better person.”
Bynum-Dabney’s trick is to make learning fun. She makes special learning plans for individual students.
“They are going to want to do it because I’m going to make it fun. They think that, ‘She’s doing what I want her to do.’ And that’s how I do it.”
The days that her students don’t want to do what she has planned, she listens.
“I try to pick up on what the kids like – to see what they are interested in,” she said.
Center manager Rosie Tate said that parents take note of her nurturing nature.
“Parents always request Ms. Bynum,” she said. “The way she works with the families and ensures that the children are meeting their goals, it’s awesome. She can do it all.”
Tickets for the Salute to Excellence in Education are available by calling 314-533-8000. General seating tickets are $85, Corporate/VIP tickets are $150.
Please click on the following link to view the Coretha Bynum-Dabney’s video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ7WAco-uhw
