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Mind, Body, and Soul

Three alumni tackle early childhood problems from outside the classroom

By Carolyn Kleiner Butler

	Karin Greathouse (G.N.O. '03) Early interventionist		Gagan Khera (Phoenix '98) Post-Doctoral Fellow, Clinical Psychology
	Hillary Roselund (Metro D.C. '99) Jumpstart Site Manager

Karin Greathouse

Karin Greathouse often starts her day by bouncing on trampolines. As an early interventionist for the Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland, Greathouse works with children 10 months to 3 years old with intensive special needs, such as autism and other developmental disabilities. Using structured play, she strives to help her young students lay a solid foundation for communication. The kids warm up by jumping on trampolines and taking turns on the slide; toothbrushing and bubble-blowing strengthen oral muscles; and singing, dancing, and dramatic play all help to build interaction skills. "It isn't these students' fault that they're behind," says Greathouse, who taught kindergarten and special education preschool as a corps member. To ensure that families understand how to enhance their children's progress, she frequently pays home visits to discuss educational and emotional goals or specific play and discipline strategies. "The families will be the ones helping the child throughout [his or her] entire life," says Greathouse. "If I can give [them] the knowledge to help their child now, it will carry over into the rest of their child's schooling career."

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Gagan Khera

Sitting on Gagan "Mia" Khera's desk at Children's Hospital Boston are photographs of Alicia, Felipe, and Espiridion, three of the first graders she taught during her corps years. Although Khera already knew she wanted to work in psychology, these students were "the reasons my interests changed from mental health to prevention work in schools," she says, recalling how the stress of coping with language barriers, alcoholic family members, violence, and poverty affected their ability to learn. Today, Khera is a post-doctoral fellow in clinical psychology at Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. As part of the hospital's neighborhood partnerships program, she regularly visits the Charles Sumner School, where she sees more than 80 students a week. Her work at the public elementary school includes everything from diagnosing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression to teaching classes on strategies for dealing with conflict or emotional regulation. Just as critical is Khera's work outside of school: guiding parents through insurance paperwork and proper discipline methods and coordinating her students' psychiatric care with their pediatricians. "It's a mistake to assume that an academic education alone will be the saving grace for all children," she says. "Unless we also address parent education, family literacy, social support, access to health care, and other protective factors, early education will be limited in its ability to make a long-term impact."

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Hillary Roselund

After four years as a pre-K teacher, Hillary Roselund went back to school to get a master's in education from Harvard. "I knew I still wanted to work at the early childhood level-that's where my passion is-but I wanted to see what other kinds of opportunities were out there," says Roselund. She decided to take a job at Jumpstart, a national nonprofit organization that brings together at-risk preschool children and caring adults-mainly college students-to focus on building literacy and socioemotional readiness. As the site manager of a pilot program for older people, Roselund trains and manages a corps of 40 volunteers age 55 and up who work one-on-one with high-need preschoolers in five Boston schools. In addition to time spent in class and small groups, the senior citizens meet with their students twice a week for two-hour literacy sessions, where they read, tell stories, write, and rhyme together. "It's a natural match," says Roselund. "Older adults have the time and the experience of raising their own kids and grandkids, and the students just light up when they're around." She also believes it's a huge boon that most of the volunteers live in the same neighborhoods as the students and their families: "They're not seen as threatening. They're welcomed far more than an outsider would be, and I think there's something really powerful about using the community's own resources, their own people, to do this work."

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