Some of Zoë Benjamin’s most meaningful moments since she started working with the University of Chicago’s Jumpstart initiative, have been when diverse learners in her assigned preschool classrooms have spoken in full sentences for the first time. Having a front row seat to such milestones as a Jumpstart team leader is just one way Benjamin, a third-year student in the College, says working with local three- and four-year-olds and their teachers has shaped her University experience and inspired her career aspirations.
“It’s such a crucial developmental stage and there are so many things that happen right there that you get to be there for,” Benjamin says. “It is kind of a magical experience to get to spend time in those classrooms and not just for big moments like that but even just when students have a really great day—to get to be a part of that is really incredible.”
UChicago’s Jumpstart initiative, a partner of the national nonprofit of the same name, is one of several initiatives within the Office of Civic Engagement’s Neighborhood Schools Program (NSP). For 45 years, NSP has placed UChicago students in roles such as tutors, teaching assistants, administrative interns, and preschool specialists at schools and other partner sites across Chicago’s South Side. Jumpstart focuses on supporting underrepresented and underserved communities to provide equity in access and opportunity in the hopes that every child enters kindergarten ready to succeed. Benjamin, who’s originally from Oakland, California, has worked with preschoolers as a Jumpstart activity leader and classroom aide at Emmett Till Math and Science Academy in Woodlawn since her first year at UChicago. Till is one of three schools UChicago Jumpstart teams partner with in the community.
Typically, Benjamin and her fellow UChicago students visit their classrooms for a few hours twice a week, leading lessons on language, literacy, and related social-emotional topics. After reading the class a book about a whale, for instance, a Jumpstart team of four to six UChicago students might help the preschool students connect with the material through ocean-themed puzzles or games or discussions about how the students might feel if they experienced what the book’s characters did.
Benjamin has seen the preschoolers she works with grow more comfortable navigating words and reading concepts and build important empathy skills during her time with Jumpstart. The initiative also aims to support classroom teachers’ needs.
“The more one-on-one attention the students can get, the better, so it’s really just being there and supporting whatever the teacher needs that day whether that’s running one of their activities, reading one of the stories, or just sitting on the rug with a kid who’s having a tough day,” Benjamin says.
“Jumpstart provides an amazing educational, social, and emotional opportunity for our youngest learners,” Till Principal Raven Patterson-Talley says. “It is a part of the fabric of our school community and really is a valued partnership here at Till Elementary School.”
The initiative’s benefits extend to the UChicago students as well. Participating in Jumpstart has offered Benjamin a chance to both gain practical experience beyond her often-theory-heavy coursework, she says, and get a fresh perspective on the demands of college life.
“Getting to be around little kids for a couple hours on a Tuesday in between your Bio. and your Soc. class is, I think, one of the best things you can do,” she says. “It makes everything seem a lot less serious and gives you a break where not only are you not expected to be thinking about those big ideas during the day, you really can’t because I think being in a preschool classroom causes you to be present in a way few other things do.”
As an aspiring early childhood educator and policy advocate herself, Benjamin says the time she’s been able to spend off campus in the community, connecting with and observing longtime Chicago Public Schools teachers in action, has been invaluable. Strengthening individual bonds with students and their families has additionally given her “a more holistic understanding of where kids are coming to school from and how their relationship to school is informed by their relationship to home and community,” Benjamin says—all insights she intends to incorporate into her own approach to teaching and her push for positive change in education more broadly.
“I didn’t necessarily enter college wanting to be a teacher or work in schools and I still don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like for me, but I think that my experience with Jumpstart really did influence that,” she says. “Getting to be a consistent figure in students’ lives and see them grow up is something that’s really going to stick with me.”
