Kauzlarich teaches preschool

The shiny young eyes at the Little Cloverdale Preschool will be focused on the smiling face of a new teacher when classes start Wednesday, September 8.

Ann Kauzlarich will replace Chris Rerat who has retired to help her husband with their new business.

Kauzlarich will travel from Bend on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to teach three- and four-year-olds at the cooperative preschool in the old two-room schoolhouse at the intersection of Highway 126 and George Cyrus Road.

"We interviewed a number of prospects for the teaching position," said Joan Orwig, president of the preschool board and one of its founders. "Ann just had all the qualities we wanted. Mostly, she had preschool teaching experience and her philosophy agreed with that of the school."

The philosophy at the Little Cloverdale Preschool, according to Orwig, is to get young children excited about learning itself, rather than emphasizing specific topics such as memorizing the alphabet.

Kauzlarich seeks "to impart the feeling to children that they will be O.K. in school no matter what their skill level.

"It's all right if they don't know how to do something," she said. "I try to give them the freedom to just try."

Kauzlarich previously developed and taught a program for creative children at Creative Kids in Bend. She holds a New York State teaching certificate and has taught in Montessori preschools.

She says she blends her Montessori experience with a somewhat more free approach in her teaching.

"I want children to know that learning can be fun," she said. "I like to have materials and projects set up with which children can experiment. The learning occurs not so much in the end result at three and four, but in the process.

"For instance, with paint and paper they are learning what they can do with paint, how it feels, what effect the fingers have as opposed to the effect of a brush," she said.

Kauzlarich believes the goals for a three-year-old should be understanding big, general concepts. A three-year-old is still learning to focus on one activity at a time, and the attention span might only be 10 or 15 minutes.

"We end each day with story time, and the children are expected to sit still and listen for the short time one story takes," she said. "This is a hard thing for them to do at first, but they learn."

A four-year-old can begin to fine tune some of his or her skills, so the focus is on following several directions in a project and becoming familiar with the alphabet, according to Kauzlarich.

Social skills, such as cooperation with other children, are a big emphasis throughout the Little Cloverdale Preschool.

According to Orwig, these are the skills which will help children be well-rounded people the rest of their lives. Under this philosophy, academics will come much more easily when students get into grade school if they already have the social skills.

Little Cloverdale Preschool actively involves parents in running the school.

"That means one of each child's parents assists the teacher at the school approximately twice a month," Orwig said.

In addition to giving mom or dad a chance to interact with their child in a different setting than at home, this has the added benefit of cutting operating costs and it lowers tuition.

"However, the greatest benefit of this type school is that parents learn early on how to be involved in their child's learning process," Orwig said. "Grade school teachers have told me over and over that those are the children who will be the most successful all through their school careers."

There are still some openings for the coming year. For more information, call 549-0781.