I wanted to take the time to share with you my success story with Head Start. 

I have been a part of the Head Start program for the last four years adn it really has helped make my family a better and stronger family unit.  My daugher started with Early Head Start and moved to Head Start with a major speech delay.  By the time she finished Head Start her self-confidence and her speaking abilities were 100% improved.  She was prepared to start kindergarten with high confidence.  I am a stronger mother due to Head Start.

Shae-Lynn is a walking miracle of Head Start's miracles.

She was a special needs child who almost died at 3 from seizures and a medication that almost killed her curing her from her seizures. She almost stroked out with her blood pressure at 170/140 and had to be medivaced up to Sacred Heart in Spokane. She had Cushings Syndrome, her brain had atrophied, and her heart had hypertrophied.

When she reached age 5, the school district had planned for her to head into a learning disabled classroom for K-2. They had me go and "view" it. There was autistic, mentally disabled children etc. I told them that it was unacceptable to me that Shae-Lynn only needed to "catch up" and that her doctors said that her brain was 100% normal and seizure-free now, and she completely emulated whatever child she was around. I really thought that the best environment for her was Headstart.

So I battled them myself because my daughter needed this so badly. The school district was afraid to say that they had "no program" appropriate for her cause of the legal ramifications. Finally, they just gave in and let her stay at Benton Franklin Head Start the extra year, and it was the difference between night and day. She was a different child. The one year she was a safety danger who ran the second the door wasn't guarded and stood on top of sinks in the bathroom. The next year made all the difference! She is now in second grade and she is a fully functioning child with slight assistance from resource room. She looks like Dakota Fanning, and she is learning to read, and she can turn cartwheel after cartwheel without stopping. She is so helpful to everyone, and no one can tell she has had so many setbacks in life.

I was three years old, when my mother enrolled me in the local Head Start program in Grayland, Washington. I don't remember much about that experience other than the memories of free choice time in the housekeeping area and painting whales and fishing boats at the art easel, because my father was a commercial fisherman. I graduated from Head Start the following spring and knew how to read within the year, thanks to Head Start.

When I was a young mother and my husband didn't make much money, I too enrolled my twin daughters in the Local Head Start program in the Franklin Pierce Head Start program through PSESD #111. From there I volunteered weekly in their classrooms and eventually signed up to be a Parent Intern.

Through the intern program I learned so much and grew beyond my wildest dreams. I learned who I was, what I wanted to become and how to interact with my children. I completed the internship two years later with a degree in Early Childhood Education and Socila Service Mental Health. With a goal to be a Head Start Teacher/Family Service Worker. That goal became a reality in October 1996 in the Tacoma Public Schools Head Start Program. I have worked for both Head Start and Early Head Start through TPS and PSESD 111, for the past 12 years in some compasity or another. I have worked in all the classroom positions as well as the family service worker pieces. I have blossomed like a flower in the sun with the help and encouragement that I recieved from my Head Start family.

I tell every family that I work with that Head Start has made such an impact in my life that I wish to give back the same spark that was given to me, through them. I have encouraged several parents to participate in Policy Council and they too, through this experience have grown. Head Start not only gives the children a better advancement in their educational career. It helps provide a positive and lasting impact on the parents and families with whom they touch. Please keep the flowers blooming and blossoming in the lives of Head Start families.