Meet Allison: Child and family development

At the Jennings Development Interplex. It's a big open space and a lot of people can rent it out and use it for different activities, but we are mainly known as a preschool. So during the school year we have about ten kids. During the summer we have a few less just because of different summer activities. But it's a preschool that goes from fall all the way through the summer.

It's different every day I walk in. So I recently worked on the preschool graduation and help plan that. For that, I helped the kids learn the songs that they were going to sing and got to put together a program.

But we also start every morning by doing circle time where we set the kids down. We play Grace's corner, and then we assign jobs of the day. So like the light helper, the teacher helper, the whiteboard helper, etc. And then we teach them things like days of the week, the month and the year.

I also play with them a lot. We like to race across the the gym or we do bubbles outside. One of my favorite things that we've also done recently was get our kiddy pools out and we go swimming and put on the sprinklers.

Well, I decided to live in Kalamazoo for the summer and I needed a job, but I wanted experience in my field. And so I was on Handshake one day just like scrolling through the different opportunities I could have through the Broncos Lead Internship Program. And I saw the Teacher Assistant at JDI and I'm like, That's perfect, right?

So I submitted my resume, had an interview with three of the staff at JDI, and I absolutely loved it my first day, and I've been here since. 

Working here has really opened my eyes to wanting to work with the younger kids, that are like newborn to preschool. They grow the most in the first three years of their life. And I want to help them do that.

I went in freshman year not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I've always had a love for children and working with people, but I didn't realize my love for them is so strong until middle of my sophomore year. I then did some research on the major and saw you could do a lot with the degree. You can be like so many different things and do it all with children.

So then I signed up for the classes in the major and took my first class and I loved it. Like all the nit picky things makes me want to do my homework.

I've really liked the professors that I've had in my major. I feel they are very easy to be personal with and to talk to. I feel like the faculty wants you to succeed. They want to get you where you want to be. 

I'd recommend the program to a lot of people. It's got a little bit of education with it but it's broader, which I really like because I don't know what I want to do yet. So you get that experience of all these different careers that you can have.

I'd recommend the program to everybody and their mother. It is a very good experience as it's not just going to your internship every day and then you're done. It's every two weeks on Wednesdays for 2 hours you go to meetings for professional development and meet different people who teach you different interview skills. It literally has taught me so much that I thought I already knew.

You get to choose everything, where at a bigger school with like 40,000 people, it's kind of hard to.

And it's fun being at Western because you get that big school feel. But at a smaller school where it's fun going to hockey games, football games, basketball games, hanging out with people. And it's not like everybody's trampling over each other and you're still meeting new people every day.

I absolutely love it! Before joining Sigma Kappa, I was the girl in high school who said, "I am not going to be a sorority girl". I'm going to have my small group of friends and I'm going to be happy all four years.

As a 2020 high school graduate, I came to Western during COVID but it was still awesome because I could hang out with people in my pod. And then my mom called me and was like, "you need to go Greek" and I'm like, okay! So I went Greek and joined Sigma Kappa.

I thought I would never would but I'm so happy I went Greek. I've met so many awesome girls from even different sororities.

Yes, I actually hold the public relations chair position, So I do a lot with working on our Instagram and Tik Tok accounts.

I also do sister highlights where I interview girls, ask them why they went Greek, why they joined Sigma Kappa and how their experience is going.