“Leading the Way,” is a series featuring the next generation of leaders in the field of early education and care.

Kretcha Roldan

Kretcha Roldan has spent her career combining social work and education.

That’s what she loved about her job as executive director of AVANCE, a nonprofit organization in Waco, Texas, that runs a two-generation education and personal development program for children and parents.

“I’m a social worker by training and by profession, but I fell in love with that concept: understanding how early education empowers parents to become children’s first teacher,” Roldan says. “It really helps the family to grow.”

Praised by former first lady Laura Bush, AVANCE serves Waco’s low-income, immigrant population.

Children and parents come to school each day. “The parents go to ESL classes or GED classes, and the children come to early childhood education classes. The parents also take parenting skills training.”

“Sometimes parents who have no means think that they cannot teach their children because they do not have the resources. When, honestly, what you need to teach a two-year-old are very basic things to have activity in their brain cells.” So the program helped parents tap their own ingenuity and creativity to use common household items to teach their children about numbers and colors.

“And both parent and child graduate. They both walk in with gowns.”

Roldan moved to Boston when her husband accepted a professorship at Boston University. And seven months ago, she became the new executive director at Elizabeth Peabody House, a community organization in Somerville, Mass., that offers many services, including a food pantry, an after school program, and an early education program.

“Literally, it’s a melting pot,” Roldan says of the preschool program. Children and their families come from Haiti, Africa, Brazil, and a host of Latin countries. Some families can afford to pay the full bill. Others rely on public support. But in all these cases, the goal is the same: Meet the needs of the whole child.

Roldan has also focused on beefing up professional development for the program’s teachers. Recent training sessions have covered helping children learn through play as well as self care, a topic that teachers asked for more information about. Teachers also attended a session on intentional learning that was hosted by the Somerville school district.

These programs are, she says, “another source of incentive, of motivation that you can pursue the next level of professional development.”

To keep up with the grim realities of our times, one teacher also recently attended an active shooter training session.

Roldan would love to do parent education at Peabody House, as she did in Texas at AVANCE, but in Somerville, she says, her parents are spread too thin. They are busy working and taking classes.

Ask Roldan what she thinks policymakers should know about early education, and her answer is passionate.

“I don’t think policymakers understand the importance of quality child care services, and especially for low-income, hard-working parents. In order for families to move from the cycle of poverty, we need to do a better job of guaranteeing child care services.”

“If families take a third job, they’re not taking it to make themselves rich. They’re just taking the third job or the second job so that they can afford this expensive state.”

But that second or third job causes some families to lose their eligibility for subsidized child care.

“There’s no incentive for parents to improve themselves if they’re going to be penalized for it. Why get the second job? Why go to college? It’s just a very distorted way of helping out a parent.”

What else do early education’s teachers and leaders need?

Each other, Roldan says, and partners who are willing to listen.

Roldan praises Somerville Public Schools for convening early educators, inviting them to trainings, and providing other resources.

Colleges are also playing a role. Elizabeth Peabody House’s pre-K kids benefit from working with college students who volunteer with Jumpstart, a national organization that provides “language, literacy, and social-emotional programming for preschool children.”

Outspoken elected officials tend to grab the headlines, Roldan says, while early educators are busy caring for kids and managing bureaucratic demands. To have more of a voice, early educators need to organize, and communities should listen to what they have to say.

“It’s important to listen to people in the field because we’re doing the work.”