NHSA

"1965 was a good year," recalls Kelly Cederholm, Head Start alum and current Head Start Teacher of The Year. "I was a barefoot, pony-tailed, shy little girl and someone told my parents of a new program that was coming to town. It was the year that Head Start would begin all over the country, and I was a part of the first class ever in New Hampshire!"

I was born and raised in Carrizo Springs, TX, a small, close-knit town an hour north of the US-Mexico border. Since before I was born my parents and their families would migrate up north 1,400 miles and work the sugar beet fields near Wahpeton, ND. My father’s parents and siblings would migrate every summer since he was 6 years old. Growing up in a migrant household was tough at times. Both of my parents finished High School but decided not to further their education so they could care for their family.

How do you you become a doctor? For some, like Latifa Sage Silski, you attend Head Start! "I remember only having peas and carrots to eat,” Latifa said, recalling her time before Head Start. “We would move from place to place. Then finally, one day we were staying at my dad’s friend’s house and there was a Head Start program nearby. My mom enrolled me.”

According to her mother, little Marina Fradera often cried when her mother would pick her up from the Goddard Riverside Head Start center in New York City, because she didn't know if she would be able to go back to the special place she loved so very much.

As a young family with many obstacles to overcome, my parents knew that they wanted to give their four daughters every advantage that was never afforded to them. So they enrolled each of us in the local Head Start program.

Aida Conroy, a Head Start alum, is currently a 2013 Teach For America corps member teaching at Casa Infantil, a Head Start center of Casa Central in her family’s neighborhood in Chicago.

Yesenia Calderon was born in North Carolina to parents who migrated to the United States in the hopes of a better life for their children. Every year her mother and father spent June through November working in tobacco, potato, tomato, cucumber and cotton farms. At the end of November, Yesenia and her siblings would pack all of their belongings and move down to Florida for the orange season.

In honor of Head Start’s 50th Anniversary and Head Start Awareness Month, the National Head Start Association will be highlighting Head Start alumni each weekday in October. We will begin the month with Head Start’s youngest learners and conclude the celebration with the Head Start Class of 1965. As the month progresses, these alumni stories will exemplify the short-term and long-term benefits Head Start has provided for our nation’s most vulnerable children and families for the past 50 years. 

Louie Neptune is a curious five-year-old who attends Head Start at the Passamaquoddy Head Start Program in Pleasant Point, Maine. His mother, Tina Downing is a tribal council member, an engaged parent and a volunteer in her son’s Head Start classroom. “I’ve decided I’m going to be a cop when I grow up,” Louie told his mom. “ Actually, I want two jobs. I want to be a cop and a tow truck driver, so I can arrest them and then tow their car away.”  

At 5:30 AM, Yajaira Monreal’s parents buckle her into her car seat for the drive to her Head Start Family Child Care Home in Castroville, California. After dropping their children off, some families, like Yajaira’s, will leave to work ten- or twelve-hour days with the peace of mind that their child is in a safe and healthy early learning environment.

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Thanks to the hard work of a Family Advocate and the members of a Male Involvement group she started last year, 52 children enrolled in Oswego County Head Start in Phoenix, New York were able to celebrate the raising of a new flagpole outside their center last Friday.

A recent post by Child Trend’s Rachel Gooze explores new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examining the health and well-being of early childhood educators.

Some members of the Head Start community are wary of the prospect of universal pre-K. Cynics and people outside of Head Start might think that these fears are about losing children to other settings or funding to other programs, and the emotional way we express our misgivings about universal pre-K sometimes supports that perception. But this perception couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Since 2008 Denise Juneau has served as Montana’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction. As a member of the Hidatsa and Mandan Tribes, Denise is the first woman of American Indian heritage elected to a statewide office. She is also another example of a Head Start to Harvard alumna, having attended Head Start in Billings, Montana and received her Master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Head Start Alumna Brenda Cassellius was appointed Minnesota’s Education Commissioner in 2011.

Representative Roger Freeman is a member of the Washington State House of Representatives, in the 30th Legislative District. Rep. Freeman attended Head Start at Highland Elementary in Omaha, Nebraska.

Dr. Glenda Allen-Jones attended Head Start at Charles Kozminski Elementary School, in Chicago, Illinois and is proud to say that Head Start has been a life long journey for her. “I was a Head Start student, a family worker for Head Start, wrote my doctoral dissertation on parental involvement in Head Start while at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,” Dr. Allen-Jones said.

Today’s alumna, TaWanna Archia, attended Family Services Head Start, in Winston Salem, North Carolina, from 1975-1976. TaWanna is currently a Project Manager at a North Carolina University and also runs her own consulting firm. With her Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management already attained, Tawanna is considering pursuing a doctoral program.

This story of accomplished alum Mike Holt, from the very first class of Head Start in 1965, was published in the Birmingham News on January 14, 2015.

"JWJ Head Start, we will always be together. We will never forget, all the lovely people we've met. You have treated us so kind, at our first day at school. Kind hearts, tender care, that's what we got here at Head Start," Sandra Chapman sang as she stood proudly on the stage preparing to graduate from James Weldon Johnson Head Start. It was only 2 ½ years earlier in the early 1970’s that Sandra remembers being so excited to attend school that she insisted on joining her sister at Head Start in Spanish Harlem, New York City.

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Head Start this year, we shine a spotlight on those special alumni who have been there from the very beginning and are making a difference today. Ford Foundation President and Head Start Alum Darren Walker is among them. “Almost fifty years ago,” Darren said, “right around my fifth birthday, a young woman knocked on our door. She was from an organization called Head Start. And she gave me mine.