With there being so many children and families in America living below the poverty line, they face a difficult task of trying to feed a family on a small dime. There are many different programs in the United States in place to help secure meals and help give every child equal opportunity to help grow as an individual. Head Start is an organization built to help give children a normal life. Children are the future of the world who cannot help but try and take advantage of the life they were given. They make it their responsibility to allow each child the opportunity to grow and develop to his or her fullest potential in the most nurturing environment possible. Children are the center piece of their school and teachers work to encourage them to strive and be the best they can be. In the classroom, activities and class plans are made to help them explore, observe, and interact with other students and staff. Head Start employs only highly qualified teachers who enjoy working with young children and their families. All teachers have an early childhood education bachelor’s degree.
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What is your role?
- Jennifer Hewitt is the head nutrition coordinator of 10 different Head Start facilities. -
How do you choose employees?
- People must apply to work at Head Start and after they apply they will be interviewed for the position. They also do accept volunteers. -
What food programs do you offer? How many kids are on the program and how do you determine who gets them?
- Although they do have people apply for position, they do need and take volunteers. There are about roughly 100 kids that will come in from the Menomonie area. We only interviewed the Menomonie area one but, they serve about 750 people around the area. The kids they will look for are ones that are below the poverty line, their parents have split, parents in jail and parents could be homeless. -
How diverse is the student body?
- Of the kids that show up, there are roughly 25 percent Hmong, 10 percent Hispanic, 2-3 percent black and the rest are mostly white. -
Where do you get food from?
-Head Start gets most of the food, that supply the kids, from local grocery stores, CACFP, Indian head, and home visitors that will bring extra food from the school to kids who are at home without food. To be able to support all the kids that rely on Head Start, they get their money form grants from the government. -
Who runs Head Start?
- They are run by two directors in a large central office. Every Head Start has different employees.