Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of stories profiling United Way agency providers in Northern New Mexico and Santa Fe. The profiles were developed by the Community Relations (CRO) Office. The profiles will publish periodically in the Daily Newsbulletin during the Lab's 2006 United Way giving campaign.
If you’re looking for Joan Jamison, lead teacher of the Children’s Zone Program at Santa Fe’s Agua Fria Elementary School, don’t look in her classroom. She is more likely to be outside, surrounded by children with smiling faces. And it’s just possible the children will be smiling because they’re counting bugs.
“My main goal is to have them learn lots of things through play,” Jamison said, speaking of the children in her program, which is supported by United Way. “You can get them counting because they’re not just counting but playing with bugs. The idea is to get them to love to learn.”
The Agua Fria Children’s Zone is Santa Fe’s first preschool program in the public schools. Any 4-year-old in the Agua Fria Elementary zone is eligible to apply, and there’s no charge. Under current funding, however, the program is limited to 16 children.
Jamison begins her daily exercises of “learning through play” with techniques designed to help the children learn basic knowledge while helping them mature and learn to work together. “We focus on the whole child with an emphasis on emotional and mental well-being,” she said. “We make them feel comfortable in this environment.”
Counting bugs is not the usual activity for teaching how to count, but it’s something Jamison knows works. She says her students routinely go on to kindergarten with useful and important knowledge other students lack. “If you can come into kindergarten with that knowledge, then you have an advantage,” said Jamison.
Former students of the preschool have another advantage; the ability to work well with other students in a learning environment in which they are familiar and comfortable. “So they are able to focus,” Jamison says. “They are able to pay attention.”
It is this kind of success that keeps Jamison working hard and feeling rewarded. “It’s so needed, she said. “When we can give, it makes a huge difference in the community.”
Jamison said there is nothing she enjoys more than knowing a child has learned something new. “It is so touching, and it never fails to fill me with joy. The biggest and best moment is the moment of comprehension.”
With the help of those who give to United Way, Jamison is able to see these moments of discovery in her students every day. And she shares her joy with those who work with her — teachers, aides and volunteers. “Everyone is here for the same reason,” she says, “to learn and to have fun.”
