It’s a rainy November morning, and there’s a quiet busyness at Crown Preschool.
About a dozen three- and four-year-olds are spread out around the large space — some are making paper snowflakes at one table, while two others practise tracing letters at another. Others play in the homemade kitchen, and a volunteer keeps a watchful eye on a small group of children playing with blocks.
Started by a group of parents 70 years ago, Crown Preschool has always run on the power of parents.
“The teachers are the only employees and the parents are responsible for everything else so they are the board members, they do a lot of the jobs around the preschool,” says Nina Monahan, one of two current teachers, and a former student.
She grew up in the Dunbar neighbourhood and attended Crown Preschool when she was three years old.
“I don’t really remember anything, but that’s just me,” Monahan says with a smile.
All three of her own children have attended Crown, two in the last four years since she started teaching there. Her youngest, Felicity, four, plays nearby while her mom talks to the Courier after class has ended for the day.
The school is run as a not-for-profit society and “every position is run by a parent of the pre-school,” says current co-president Amanda Girard. Parents take care of everything from budgeting, hiring and payroll to helping out in the classroom and providing the daily snack.
Girard first got involved with Crown Preschool when her oldest was two. Her younger child was just a few months old at the time, and she was looking around for a parent-participation preschool that would allow her to also bring along her infant.
“I fell in love with the school and the teachers, the whole atmosphere,” she says, adding that it was one of the only ones she called that would allow her to bring along her baby.
Early years
Monahan and fellow teacher Samantha Winter move around the room as their students go from station to station — from the blocks to the sand table, to play with Play Doh or puppets.
The room is large and bright. Colourful carpets adorn the floors and the students artwork is hung up around the room. One corner includes a shelf busting with books, a bench and a collection of a few small bean bag chairs. In another, art easels stand at the ready armed with paper, jars of paint and brushes, and big colourful pieces of chalk.
The school started in the fall of 1948 after the Queen Elizabeth elementary school parent-teacher association (PTA) decided it needed a kindergarten for its five year olds. Kindergarten was not mandatory in B.C. schools until the early 1970s.
A local mom, Meek Jones, was helping in another private kindergarten at that time. She was approached by the PTA and offered $100 a month to teach kindergarten for Queen Elizabeth. She accepted and stayed with the school for almost a quarter century. Originally called Queen Elizabeth Kindergarten, the school’s first home was in Dunbar Heights Baptist Church. Several dads built tables and other equipment for the school and blocks, which remained in use for decades to come, were made at Vancouver Vocational Institute.
In 1949, the school changed its name to Crown St. Kindergarten and until 1963 offered a five mornings a week program for five year olds. The program cost $5 a month and there were usually 25 children in the class. One parent would stay and help each day.
The 1960s brought change for Crown. At that time, many co-op kindergartens started closing as more schools started offering kindergarten classes — Crown expanded to offer a class for four year olds. And in 1965 the preschool moved to its current location at St. Philip’s Church. Two years later, Tom Thumb Preschool also moved into the church and is also still in operation today.
In the late 1960s, Jones started adding three year olds to the classes. Today Crown offers a toddler class for two year olds one day a week and preschooler classes for three and four year olds three or four days a week.
Parental participation
While some things have definitely changed over the years, from its start with the Queen Elizabeth school PTA in 1948 one thing has remained the same — parent participation has been integral to the operation of Crown Preschool.
Monahan and fellow Crown teacher Samantha Winter say that having the parents deeply involved in the day-to-day operation of the preschool creates a special kind of community. The parents and teachers meet on a monthly basis, and the school provides education for parents, bringing in speakers to talk about different topics — a nutrition expert on picky eating, experts on attachment parenting, physical development and positive discipline.
“We have a very different focus for our program, which is, I think, to bring families together rather than just to provide a place where there kids can go,” Monahan says. “That’s really the heart of it and it feels really different. It feels much more social and community oriented, and we feel like we support parents as much as children.”
Winter adds, “We get to know them so much better, it’s not just a drop off and a pick up and just seeing their face a little bit. When they do come in and they help and provide snack and stay after to tidy up, we get to know them and we have conversations with them and so we build a better bond with them.”
“[Parents] are so involved in the business of the preschool that they are really invested in a very different way as well from other styles of school,” Monahan says.
Both say the parent-participation-style of school offers a type of community some feel is lacking in the city.
Winter grew up in Lillooet in B.C.’s Interior and when she three years old there weren’t any preschools in town.
“There was one, but it was sort of out of town a little bit, and my dad actually created a parent-participation preschool, which was the embodiment of a small community all coming together,” she says. “It was really nice growing up and then moving here and having my own family and really missing that small-town feel where you know everybody or you’re involved in everything and so being in this environment again is really lovely to get that sense of that global village. Everybody is still connected even in this big city.”
Monahan agrees.
“In Vancouver these days, so many people lament the loss of community and connection, and continuity as well — it’s a city that’s changing a lot,” she says. “We feel like these little beacons of hope sometimes in Vancouver that they still exist and that people are still willing to commit the time to do it, and we notice that a lot of parents that do come to this style of preschool stay really involved, so they’ll be involved in their PACs at school and volunteer a lot. It’s a really good launch for parents to see the benefits of doing the work to be part of a community and that stays with them a long time I think.”
@JessicaEKerr
jkerr@vancourier.com
