December 17, 2008 State of Education: Benefit of the Jumpstart program Play video

(NECN) - The Boston Foundation and NECN continue the series: State of Education: Making the grade in Massachusetts. Over the course of this year we have been examining what's working and what isn't in public schools, from preschool to college. The focus of this program is the education pipeline.

NECN's Peter Howe reports on Jumpstart-- which pairs college students with pre-schoolers and it's a life changing experience for all those involved.

Maybe you don't like Mondays, but the kids at Project Hope in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood love them. Mondays (and Wednesdays) are when their friends from Wheelock College in Boston come to read and play with the four-year- olds. They are volunteers with an early childhood education program called Jumpstart (jstart.org) .

Brennan, age 4: Tell me your favorite thing about when Jumpstart comes. "Pretty much when we read a story." What's your favorite story? "Goldilocks and The Three Bears.''

Sanya, age 4: What's your favorite book? "Dora The Explorer!"

These are kids from one of Boston's neighborhoods that struggles the hardest with violent crime and poverty, the Uphams Corner and Dudley Street sections of Dorchester. Some of the children here are from homeless families who live at Project Hope. The idea of Jumpstart is basic: enrich four-year-olds' lives with close, one-on-one attention, exactingly designed to help get them ready for kindergarten.

"It's to make sure that our kids have all of

the resources that they need early on to be successful,'' said Susan Werley, who is northeast director for the nationwide program. "The heart of the program is the individual time our core members spend with the children. That's about 4 hours every week.''

Lori Thames runs Project Hope. She brought in Jumpstart last year for the first time. "We believe in helping children build their capacity from self-esteem inside-out, and we believe Jumpstart has that same kind of mission,'' Thames said. Recalling children last year participating in the program, Thames said, "They would always talk about the Jumpstart girls. We had one time where the children were at circle time ... 'This afternoon Jumpstart comes.' And the kids got so excited: 'Who? The play girls?' That's what they coined them as: 'The play girls in the red shirts.' It was really about that one-on-one relationship.''

Howe: They have lots of fun, but those "play girls in red shirts" have a detailed lesson plan for each day, and before they come up to play, they've strategized how to sneak in phonics lessons.

[Video: Today they are singing the children's song "Bingo" ("There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o, B-I-N-G-O). The Wheelock volunteers in a meeting before they see the children run through how they will practice rearranging letters and changing the song to Tingo, Ringo, Wingo, and Singo, then have the children identify when they have changed the B to T or R or W or S and sing the song accordingly.]

ABCD Roxbury Head Start teacher Vivian Dobrinsky has seen the impact of Jumpstart corps, both volunteering for two years as a college student at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and later teaching at Escuelita Boriken, a bilingual Spanish-English school in Boston's South End. "They grew in so many different ways, not just with language and literacy but with their social skills and their independence skills,'' Dobrinsky said. "It was a big difference. It was great ... What a corps member is able to do is really able to get that relationship, be a friend, and not so much a teacher or authority figure.''

Jumpstart closely monitors how four-year-olds participating in the program are progressing through a 75-point questionnaire, which is also used to refine the curriculum frequently. In their most recent study, during the 2006-07 school year, compared to a control group, Jumpstart participants improved 21 precent more in language skills during the year, and 32 percent more on social-relations measures.

"The activities that they did that really just got the kids moving and excited ... 'This is my partner, and she's singing to me,' '' Thames said. She also raves about how Jumpstart volunteers supplement her staff teachers at Project Hope: "To see them grow as the individual, we know it was directly linked to that Jumpstart relationship. That one-on-one that they got ... 'You can do this, you can read this by yourself.' ''

Jumpstart gets student volunteers from 12 colleges around New England. Close to Boston: Boston College, Boston University, Emerson, UMass-Boston, Northeastern, Simmons, Suffolk, Wheelock, Tufts; Bridgewater State; and the Universities of Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Jumpstart was founded 15 years ago, and it's grown to serve 600 students in Boston and over 15,000 around the country. As they look to the future, they have very big ambitions.

"We are shooting for a goal of serving 100,000 children in the next several years,'' Werley said. "It's our responsibility to grow our model and serve children.''

All the students who volunteer at Project Hope are women from Wheelock College, many studying to be teachers. Jumpstart changes their lives, too. Marissa Way, a sophomore early-childhood-education major from East Lyme, Conn., who works with a boy named Anthony, said, "The other day we were writing our names, and he wrote an 'A' for the first time, and I started jumping up and down. He got excited because I was so excited for him, and it was his first time writing an 'A,' for his name, 'Anthony,' and I felt like a proud parent.''

Anthony's classmate, Brennan,thanks in no small part to help from Jumpstart, has learned how to spell his whole name B-R-E-N-N-A-N, and a lot more.

(Video of Brennan spelling his name: "A!" And then? "N!" So how many N's do you have in your name? "Three!")

Howe: A couple of hours each day, a couple of days every week, Jumpstart corps team members are planting seeds that will make a difference for a lifetime.

State of Education: The education pipeline

State of Education: Challenge of getting parents involved

State of Education: Identifying at-risk children

State of Education: Strides made in Boston schools

State of Education: What changes should be made?