By: Ty Lounsbury
Wallenpaupack has a lot of amazing programs at our school; one of which is the Childcare CTE program that is supervised by Mrs. Geisheimer and Mrs. Rowe. This program has many ways to benefit people going into the childcare pathway, and more specifically, it focuses on working with young children. One of the many benefits of going through this CTE is participating in their World of Wonders (WOW) program.
The WOW program is the hands-on portion of the Childcare CTE. Everything that students learn during their time in the CTE classroom is applied when they work with children in the World of Wonders program. There are two groups of students that come to the high school: one group of nine in the morning and a group of seven in the afternoon. The first two blocks are for seniors and juniors, who work with the group of nine children, and the last two blocks of the day are for freshmen and sophomores who work with the remaining seven children. The students and teachers run a free preschool program for children ages three to five. Anyone from the community who has children may participate in the program, but it’s something that people only hear about through word of mouth because the program is not advertised.
The high schoolers create lesson plans, lead circle times, and talk about things like colors and shapes. This is a good way for young children to see what school will be like. However, the point of this program is not to babysit children; it’s to give students an idea of what a childcare center might look like and to experience working with kids. They do it three days a week: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for about two hours.
Although this isn’t all that the Childcare CTE has to offer, it’s an amazing way to prepare for anyone who does want to work with children when they’re older. Once a person reaches 18 years of age, they can work at a daycare, and this program is a great way to prepare for that. There are also volunteering opportunities to work with children in the community that the Childcare CTE can connect students with. This is just one of the amazing CTE programs offered at Wallenpaupack.
