Five-year-old Dylan meticulously attaches pieces of bright orange construction paper to a penciled outline of his name, one of the first tasks assigned to his Kindergarten Success Institutes (KSI) class on Thursday morning, August 13th. Transitional kindergarten teacher Julene Armstrong devised the project to teach the kids to write their own names; at the moment, however, Dylan seems more concerned with the difficulty of prying the scraps from his gluestick and fingers so that the pieces make their way to his template.
KSI classes operate at various south Santa Barbara County elementary schools about three to four weeks before the start of the school year each summer to prepare four- and five-year-old students to enter kindergarten classes in the fall. Armstrong’s class at Harding Elementary School is part of the program’s second one-week session, which meets Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. each morning.
Community Impact Officer Melinda Hodge visited the class that Thursday on behalf of United Way of Santa Barbara, which funds the KSI program. About 15 years ago, she said, local kindergarten teachers and school administrators began noticing a gap in preparedness between students who had spent time in preschool and those who had minimal experience in such a structured environment. United Way found that these students often come from low-income families with limited access to or awareness of early childhood educational opportunities like preschool. The KSI program is designed to “even the playing field” by teaching typical school day routines and easing students into parental separation for hours as a time. “Social-emotional growth is most important” as the kids complete the program, Hodge tells me.