Head Start Heals: Head Start is Home
CaShawn Thompson: My name is CaShawn, and I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and I started Head Start as a 4-year-old in 1977. My memories of Head Start always creep back. I remember coloring and singing and dancing, and I remember that my Head Start teacher had the same last name as me. And I grew up and had children. When we got to Head Start, my daughter was 4, and I had left an abusive relationship. I had to kind of pull myself together, you know, having left with just a suitcase. I knew that violence wasn't healthy, and I knew that my children were better off seeing me happy and whole because that would give them permission to be happy and whole.
When we got to Head Start, you know, I was brought in – “OK, your kids are going to come to school, but what do you need? Do you need job training? Do you need medical care? Do you need mental health care?” All of which I did. And it was really there that I began understanding this holistic approach to taking care of children, where you can't care for a child outside the context of a healthy family relationship and a healthy school-family relationship.
I'm a Head Start teacher now. It's where I started my own education and learning to be happy and whole and free and love books and love singing and being silly and imaginative, and think, I went back. And I don't have any plans on leaving because, you know, Head Start is home. I guess – like, I don't know how else to describe it. Head Start is home.
[Music]
[Child giggling]
CaShawn attended a Head Start program as a young child in the 1970s. As an adult mother of two, she left an abusive relationship and set out to start a new life — at Head Start.
