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Students petition for Child Study to become an academic course

Bella Purcell’s buddy listens intently to her read Dr. Suess’s “Hooper Humperdink…? Not Him!”

On Nov. 12, six Child Study students—Kelsey Bobrow ’15, Hannah Berggren ’15, Megan Nuzzo ’15, Renee Reiner ’15, Hadley Ward ’15, and Diana Zogeb ‘16—presented before the collaborative team the reasons behind their push for Child Study to be considered an academic course.

Child Study is essentially a high school student-run preschool. Students create and implement lesson plans for children between the ages of ages three and five. While juggling the responsibilities of preparing class activities and providing individual attention to assigned buddies, students are also studying the children’s social, cognitive, and emotional development.

Colby Kranz ’15, a former Child Study student, strongly supports the petition to have the class weighted into students’ academic GPA.

“Between planning lessons and writing observations for each kid, I always found myself spending long hours in the classroom,” Kranz reflected. “It’s a lot of planning, and if you don’t do your part, it’s not just [your grade] that suffers, but the children, too.”

The class’s final grade evaluation is based on a thorough compilation of the semester’s observations—according to Kranz, this turned out to be a ten-page write-up.

Hannah Berggren seconds the rigor of the course, contending that skills learned in Child Study prepare students for not only the expected level of work in college, but also for future job opportunities.

“At the presentation, I talked about the portfolio I made for college interviews, and how the interviewer was so impressed by the work I had done, saying it was similar to a college-level psychology course,” Berggren explained.

Berggren also discussed the Westport 2025 lens and the ways that Child Study has integrated these values into its course requirements. With the help of Child Study teacher Ms. McClary, students divided and conquered the initiative’s core values—tackling subjects like “critical thinking” and “real world application.”

“I look at the lens and I ask myself how I can create a classroom where we are meeting these expectations,” McClary said. “Considering where the school wants to be in 2025, we are actually doing these things right now.”

According to McClary, the class “is a business” and has presented students with countless employment opportunities, such as working at Pumpkin Preschool or independently as a tutor.

“Kids that take this class are very, very invested,” McClary said, motioning towards the printed schedule before her. The sheet, which had previously been tacked onto the bulletin board by the classroom’s entrance, displayed each student’s assigned tasks for the week.

“The class is a lot of responsibility. We have our own class work to do and are responsible for teaching 14 preschoolers,” Kelsey Bobrow ’15, a current Child Study student, said. “[At the presentation], we discussed why we believe Child Study should be counted as an academic class, so now we have to wait and see what the team decides.”

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About the Contributor
Daniela Karpenos, Web News Editor
Daniela Karpenos ’15, a dedicated member to Inklings, is not just an important part of the paper, but she is also very educated in the field of psychology. When Karpenos isn’t playing Tennis for Trumbull or the Wreckers, or organizing charity events for her temple youth board, or speaking Russian with her twin, or fulfilling her duties as Web News Editor of Inklings, she is working hard to become a well-studied psychology student. Karpenos has worked on Inklings for three years, and her senior year marks her first position on the paper. She took the Intro to Journalism class in freshman year and has been on the paper from sophomore all the way to senior year. She has progressively gotten more involved, as she started taking photos freshman year and worked her way up to a News Editor position this year. Karpenos is also passionate about psychology. She plans to major in Clinical Psychology when she goes to college. In the summer of 2014 she interned at the Yale Child Studies Center where she was entering and validating data. She also participated in an ongoing study about A.D.D. where Yale is attempting to develop a game that would help kids with A.D.D. focus better. In the summer of 2013, she went to the Yale Explo -- where she worked on her creative writing and studied psychology. It is clear that Karpenos is a dedicated learner and when asked about her career choices she said she wanted to pursue psychology and, “Although I don’t see myself in a journalism career I definitely will use skills I’ve developed here.”

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