This year at Klein Cain there is a small daycare available at the school from Tuesday to Thursday, where students help care for children. These students who care for the preschoolers are from the child guidance class offered here at the school. Child guidance is a block-period class offered to juniors and seniors here at Klein Cain. This class offers students the opportunity to work with preschoolers and gain life experience. Students who are interested in this class need to take the prerequisite class child development, apply for the class, and go through the screening process. This is the first year the class has been available for students and the program is still growing.

“My students serve as the teachers to the preschoolers, they take over and teach in place of myself. The preschoolers come in on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 8 a.m to 11 a.m. On Mondays, the students plan for the week, while Fridays are used to determine what worked and what did not work,” child guidance teacher Melissa McKeever said.

For the first few weeks of the class, the students work to create lesson plans and learn how to work with children. The students build the schedule, making sure that the children have a balanced day. Children in the program do more than just play, these preschoolers are exposed to language arts, social studies, science, and math. In this program, they work to expose the children to important concepts early on in a fun way.

“Math could be something as easy as counting or sorting by color, language arts could be practicing to write their name,” McKeever said. “They learn about letters and shapes, there are musical activities, and we take them to the library on Wednesdays.

Students interesting in taking this class must have taken the class child development, as it is a prerequisite. From there, they are required to undergo a screening process to make sure they are prepared and meet all the requirements. Students who take this class represent the school and their community, but will also be working with children. As such, these select students are required to have clean records and want to truly want to be in the class.

“These students represent Klein Cain, the program, and our community. This means students cannot have ISS or have been in trouble,” McKeever said. “They need to be good students who really desire being in this class.”