Personal Narrative: My Visit To La Casa

What I was first able to observe during my visit to “La Casa” which is considered a head start program in Chicago, is the fact that it resembles a business. With its blue and pink-ish kind of beige looking letters fading on its store front, we can see that it has been here for quite some time. Entering the building gave me that old feeling of nostalgia of when I was attending grammar school, although technically this facility isn’t a grammar school. After speaking with the main desk and getting squared away, I was placed in Mrs. Garcia’s preschool classroom. In her classroom, Mrs. Garcia had a helper, Ms. Gamboa. At the time of my visit, the children were not present, so I asked the lead teacher and assistant a few general questions …show more content…
I was also told a good number of these children came from households with different support systems, such single-parent households, or households with grandparents and other family members. The classroom itself was very colorful and busy. Everything from the materials on the floor to the materials up high were bright colored and educational in one way or another. From the rugs with letters and numbers on it, to the toys to the furniture. The classroom was divided into different areas and everything seemed to be very specifically organized, there was paintings hanging from the windows. A couple of them were specifically appealing, one was a painting of day …show more content…
Everything from hours of business, to amount of children to be served, age range is really up to one person or those people involved in this business and its not necessarily up to a board or staff or even professionals necessarily. It seems that lot of the time the person in charge has their own children or other relatives under their care in the same group they professionally take care of, as opposed to putting them in a different classroom as it would be the case in a regular school. It also seems like in most cases, location has a lot to do with who comes to a specific home based day care. It is not odd to see that a lot of the children that are put in a home day care are placed there solely because of the location and the convenience of having the ability to drop them off there. The other important thing is also the curriculum, assuming there is one, it is also up to the caretaker and it usually is not revised or approved by a superior. Rates are also determined by one person. Also, the child could be exposed to children of different age groups, and abilities as opposed as in a center where children are divided up by age or sometimes even abilities (special ed, early intervention, language). This can be comforting for children as it may remind them of their own family dynamics. The size of the group may also be significantly different, allowing more interaction with the