By Alice McAuliffe
For Michele Morris, her work days are full of different events, filled with drying tears, giving hugs, and making children feel loved. Most days, she sits with children at the small, colorful tables, helping them paint and glue papers together, she settles arguments between two children who want the same toy and she tries to remember every detail of each child’s day. and she recounts every detail to parents who wonder about what their child did all day, and for Michele, it’s all part of job, to not only care for these children but to make sure they have a good time in daycare while their parents are at their own nine to five jobs.
Michele has been in this line of work for nearly seventeen years, and has worked a many different kinds of daycare, from major corporations like Mulberry to more modest, privately owned ones. But this time, she left her previous daycare center for another reason. “I moved from a private daycare to another because they had no pre-kindergarten program,” she said, “and I’m glad Kelly’s in a new place.”
Having her daughter in a daycare center is nothing unusual, considering how many childcare centers there are, and how many kids are being enrolled in these places every year. While daycare can seem like a convenient, easy choice for working parents, picking the best place can be very difficult. This is because there are many styles and types of daycare out there, but the three most basic kinds are corporations with multiple centers, home daycares run from someone’s house, and private ones that are own by someone, but are in a separate building. Each different kind of daycare offers many different services and programs, and sifting through that can make parents wonder, what’s best for us? Where can I find a daycare that not only gets my child ready for school in a few years, but works best for my schedule? Shifting through all that is hard to decide, but looking at the different daycares and talking to people who’ve been through it already can shed some light on the choice.
One of the largest corporate daycares in the country is Bright Horizons and this particular business was started by Roger Brown and Linda Mason in the 1986. Outside, it looked like a long, pale yellow ranch building, with a number of fenced-in playgrounds out front and a large parking lot in the back. When I went in, I saw that they had a keypad on the front door, one that requires a number code in order to let anyone in and this is a safety feature to make sure not just anyone can walk in and cause problems. The building had a very cookie-cutter, uniform style to it, one that screams “corporate” in how it’s run and set up.
While this kind of daycare does teach children basic things like colors and shapes, they also offer a number of different program that teach children about cultures, a program called “Imagination Celebration” where the children can dance, play instruments and have a great time discovering music. This center even teaches pre-schoolers math and writing, things that are surprising considering that these children are only three years old. While they teach advanced things, they also make sure that everything is appropriate and within each child’s reach. “We look at each child’s interest and development level,” said their director, Lori Christiansen, “and we look at what range they are at in each stage and plan activities around that range.” This type of center also provides after school care to kindergarten children, so they have a place to go after school until their parents can pick them up. These are services that can often be found at other types of corporate daycares, and while they can offer a lot to help children get ready for school, they don’t offer a very homey setting for kids, and this might make parents wonder if this is best for them.
One of the many private owned daycares is Creative Kids Academy, located in Norwood Massachusetts, on Washington Street and right across from Bird Park. This daycare center is built inside a three story, white house, it has a fenced in playground and inside, it has a staircase, cheery yellow wall covered with murals and art projects, the rooms are filled with toys and the whole place has a warm, homey feel to it.
Fsionbhan, a pretty, late twenties women bought the home daycare and has done what she can to make her families happy. They teach a number of different topics to the kids, such as science, math, art, yoga and help children improve their language skills. She also makes sure her teachers plan their activities around the ages and the abilities of their children. Her center also offers a number of extra programs available to the children, like having a puppet show, and having bubble shows outside, where the children can watch huge bubbles being blown and have the chance to pop them afterwards. They also have Tumble Bus come to their school, where the children can climb inside a school bus that’s had it’s seats removed, and instead is filled with mats and padded climbers so they can practice gymnastics, exercise and have a fun break from the classroom. “We have fieldtrips brought to the school,” she says, “the parents can fill out a permission ship if they want their children to be part of these programs.”
While these are just two of the many places out there, just knowing what they do behind their doors isn’t quite enough to help parents pick a place. It helps talking to others who have either been in these kinds of daycare or had their children enrolled there, to hear what they think and what they experienced.
Christie Marcuella, a thirty year old woman who has left the daycare field, had her daughter go from a church daycare to afterschool care at a corporation. Her daughter, Eleanor, is very advanced and enjoyed school, which impacted how she did in daycare and how she’s doing in school. Marcuella was more impressed with the homier daycare, telling me how they were more intimate and personal with the children, something that she felt did a lot of good for her kids. “They did a lot for my kids,” she said, “they were very giving and generous…” Her daughter went to an after school program after her kindergarten and it help her get ready for school, where she had to learn about riding on the bus and learning the structure of school.
But she had a much better experience there then in the corporate daycare, and one of the few positive things is that corporate daycares can hire and train their employees, so the teachers can do a better job looking after the children. To Marcuella, corporate daycares are “more about watching the kids then teaching them. The kids are there to be watched while their parents are at work and if they learn anything, great.” One of the biggest problems she had was when the daycare refused to pick her child up after school, because she was the only one at that school and to them, it wasn’t worth driving there for one kid. Of all the things she said, the one that stuck with me the most was, “to them (corporations), you’re just a number to the company and the company is more important then numbers.” While she wasn’t thrilled with the corporate daycare, Eleanor was only in their program for ten months and in the church daycare for two years, making her
Marcuella and Michele Morris aren’t very different from each other, both have spent years in daycare and both understand how they work and teach children. She knows that home daycares are in someone’s home, with only a few children and they can have different ages in one room. To her, corporations can have a lot of kids, so they need bigger rooms and more staff to keep up with their numbers, and that private daycares are in the middle, with separate staff and rooms for each age group. She knows from working in corporations daycares can have a number of benefits, like being open for business longer and having fewer days off, providing snacks and lunches to the kids, having better equipment and toys, just to name a few. She also pointed out that home and private daycares are often closed when the own takes a vacation, something that can cause problems for parents if they need to drop their kids off during that time.
But the biggest thing she’s learned from daycare is that a number of factors impact the choice, like if a parent needs to drop their children off early in the morning, they might pick a corporation that’s open much earlier then a home daycare because it’s convenient for them. They also look at locations and see if they want a daycare that’s closer to their home or their work, and prices impact the choice, as corporations can be more expensive while private and home daycares are more willing to take in welfare children. Morris also said that “it depends on the child, that some aren’t kids comfortable in daycare and in that case, a home daycare might be best for them until they get used to it.” or, going the other way, they might pick a corporation because they feel their children will learn more and get more out of their time in daycare. Morris knows that daycares teach quality programs and provide children with an early start to their education. But she also knows that each child is unique and special, and that when it comes to picking a daycare for them, it’s best to choose one where the child is comfortable, one that the parents feel works for their lives, and while it’s not a simple choice, it’s one that can impact a whole family years from now.
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English 280: The Journalistic Essay 