Klein Head Start

Freshman William Thames had just spent the last five minutes building a Lego house for a Klein Headstart preschooler, a house soon to be destroyed as fast as it was made. The student lifted it above his head and threatened to smash it on the floor. Before Thames could save the house, it was in pieces on the ground, joining multiple other failed lego constructions. Thames just shook his head, defeated. 

“Wrangling preschoolers was not easy,” Thames said.

Klein Headstart is a preschool for underprivileged and special needs students. With five classrooms dedicated to infants and toddlers, Headstart provides kids with a free education so that their parents can focus on needs other than daycare. 

When the Gaytán and Posa advisories arrived, they were given a brief tour of the school, then separated into different classrooms. About four freshmen were in each room along with the teacher. 

The students helped out with different tasks in each room, like keeping the kids focused as their teachers hollowed-out pumpkins. Tactics from telling stories about pumpkins to measuring the pumpkins with string were employed so that the children would not run off elsewhere. 

“I’ve got a lot of respect for those teachers,” freshman Jakob Fjeld-Hanson said. 

The students left Headstart with a wider view of the world. 

“It’s so nice to get out of class and see all the cultures that come together at different schools,” freshman Mia Harris said. “The experience made us grateful for what we have in our life.”