* * Rainbow Riders prepares children for life

Unless you have a pre-school child, you probably don’t think much about early childhood education. Kristi Snyder, administrator at Rainbow Riders Child Care Center in Blacksburg, thinks about it every day. “I’ll spend my entire working life at Rainbow Riders. It’s in my blood. I eat and sleep it.”

Children are programmed by nature to learn. Their synapses are geared to picking up information and retaining it readily. For example, they are far better equipped to learn new languages than adults. “They are not afraid to try or sound silly,” Kristi said as we chatted in her office, “They learn to speak foreign languages and even to write in other alphabets like Chinese.

“We see two-year-olds recognizing their printed name. In early childhood, we have an incredible opportunity to provide an environment to learn.

“Children learn best by playing. Their play is their work. They see puzzles and counting and sorting. Numeracy emerges by age one or two. In infants, they babble and piece words together, then sentences. I tell our teachers that they are Webster’s dictionary for the kids, and I ask them to narrate everything. Those words become the children’s.”

Kristi started at Rainbow Riders at age 17 as a high school student and she just turned 50, so she’s been at this for 33 years. She has a degree in early childhood education from Virginia Tech. She became director at age 22 and owner at age 26.

“We’ve learned so much about how the brain develops and works since I began my career. What we know now is there is a huge amount of brain development between zero and five years of age. Researchers think that 90% of brain development happens during those years.”

Wrap your head around that: Public schools now start with kindergarten, at age 5. So 90% of a child’s mental development has happened before most kids get any formalized schooling.   

Kristi mentioned several programs like Headstart and Early Headstart, but for the most part, unless parents can afford to send their kids to a quality school like Rainbow Riders, education is often piecemeal or not at all. Children are parked in front of TV or computer screens.

In decades past, in many families, moms didn’t work. So they provided care for the children. Nowadays, it’s rare when both parents don’t need to work.

Rainbow Riders gets 96% of its income from tuition, paid by the parents, typically $800 to $900 per month per child. In the infant room, there are 3 babies per teacher, then less for the older children. And yet Rainbow Riders still struggles to pay living wages to its staff. “They start at $10/hr., and we’ve worked for 30 years to get to that. I have people who have been here for 20 years and still make under $20/hr. It brings me to tears. It’s unfair beyond belief.

“I’m looking to hire teachers that love children and have a willingness to learn, communications skill, and common sense. That’s a tall order at $10 or $12/hr.”

And schools like Rainbow Riders get no help from the governments, either local, state, or federal. This is a different model from the rest of the developed world and even much of the emerging world where childhood education is socialized just like our public schools. Consider this: Cuba is a world leader when it comes to early childhood development, with over 99% of its children under six attending a learning facility. Cuba is far ahead of the USA! We need to fix this and we need to fix it fast.

Not only are Rainbow Riders kids better prepared for academics in kindergarten, but they’re also better socialized, better problem solvers, and far more likely to be successful and productive citizens as adults. She said, “Our teachers instill in these children the value of good decisions, every day. We teach caring, empathy, and citizenship. Our children do better not just in grade school, but for the rest of their lives.”

Most kids in our area and in much of our nation don’t receive instruction from a licensed program. “We accept only 32 one-year-olds and we’re the largest facility in Montgomery County. There are thousands of young children in the New River Valley who aren’t in a licensed program due to affordability, access, or quality.  

“In many other nations, federal governments take care of people, young and old. Here it is a familial responsibility. We should be ensuring that every child should have a quality early childhood experience. Our country’s future depends on it.

“What our programs are doing well is creating innovators, problem solvers, and thinkers. The society that raises innovators will rule the 21^st Century economy.

“What we’re not doing well is involving all children. We need to have significant change. We need to elect people who put children and families first, not billionaires and corporations. Early childhood education is not political. But I want people to know that it is essential to our future, for public safety, for national security, and our economy.”