Head Start Observation Report

My experience at Head Start preforming service-learning has allowed me to experience, firsthand, how and what the material I have read about in Berk (2013) and other sources looks like. In addition, my involvement with Head Start has allowed me to learn how to actually preform psychological tests—like Piaget’s conservation test—on preschool aged children. In other words, I have been able to apply classroom knowledge to ‘real world’ situations and observe the outcome. Not only has my comprehension of the child developmental psychology material increased due to my experience at Head Start and experiment with a field of interest in psychology, but this occurrence has also introduced me to a pressing matter of child’s developmental health in lower class neighborhoods. Before visiting Head Start, though the Jaime Hulley Center is only located approximately ten minutes away from my school, Fairfield University, I honestly had no idea of the center’s existence or the great need for the system. Though some may mock or judge me for this level of ignorance or degree of sheltered-ness, I know many other people who too share my prior unawareness—my parents, friends, and roommate are some of many. So writing this, I am struck with the question: why have …show more content…
For instance, I remember standing in classroom seven on the first day of Head Start. I found myself wondering how anyone, especially someone like Edward Zigler (1998) and the Head Start’s website, which both argue that the main objective of head start is to provide preparation for low-income children entering school, could expect to prepare the children to enter school with middle-upper class children when the classrooms are simply not equipped with physical resources, space, or knowledge—specifically from the