Dana M. Watts, center coordinator for Urban League Head Start, was studying social work when she first began working at an early childhood center for her practicum requirement.
“I would go home every night, and I would light up when I talked about the children,” Watts said. “My husband said, ‘It’s almost like you have a gift working with those kids, they really respond to you.’”
With his encouragement, she went back to school to earn a bachelor’s degree in child development from Central Methodist University. She’s been an early childhood educator now for more than 20 years. The one thing she loves about the Urban League Head Start program is its attention to family – the reason she was originally interested in social work.
“Here at the Urban League Head Start, we truly believe in the child-parent-educator partnership. It’s a collaboration. We work together to make sure every child is ready for kindergarten,” she said.
“I truly feel that early childhood is an important piece in every child’s life because it is that foundation and that basis on which all other education occurs and is built on.”
Watts is the recipient of the St. Louis American Foundation’s 2012 PNC Early Childhood Education Award.
At the Urban League, Watts started off as a teacher, and then became a lead teacher and a then master teacher. Now as the center coordinator, she gets to coordinate all the program’s components, including the management team, the nutritionists, psychologists and teachers.
“I am working with the groups together to empower families,” Watts said. “In this position, I am living out the dream I’ve always wanted. Not only being an educator, but also working with that family component.”
At the center, Watts said each child is seen as an individual, and not just a group of children. Teachers aim to adapt their instruction to each child.
“A lot of people just think that early childhood is play, but we all know that children learn so much through their play,” she said. “They are learning a love for learning.”
Within the first five years, the brain grows at a rapid rate, she said. If children can get as much learning and higher thinking in those years as possible, they will be able to excel that much further in their lives, she said.
“A lot of times learning hands-on for the children is more than me saying, ‘This is why we do this,’” Watts said. “What I love about early childhood is they get that hands-on experience. They get to get out there and touch and explore. They aren’t sitting at a desk all day.”
She believe it is imperative that our nation invest in early childhood education.
“I just feel that it is so important that as a nation we put more emphasis on early childhood, because its our foundation,” she said. “If our foundation is rocky, you can’t expect that foundation to stand up.”
