Our Unique Brand of Coop Education
SPP is a member of the Seattle Central Community College network of cooperative preschools. This model involves parents and caregivers working as teaching assistants in the classroom. Families are expected to work one shift per week, assisting in the implementation of the play-based curriculum. Families also take on a job for the coop such as treasurer, librarian, or other school function.
In addition to learning skills in the classroom from the head instructor, families gain invaluable insight into parenting through a once-monthly evening of parent education. Parent educators are members of the SCCC faculty, specializing in early childhood development. These meetings serve not only as an opportunity to learn about research-supported methods of parenting, but as an exchange of ideas between parents who have witnessed each other and each other’s children in action in the classroom.
One unique aspect of SPP’s brand of coop education is a central commitment to integrating into the curriculum monthly lessons and activities related to a particular social and/or environmental issue. SPP’s goal is to raise awareness of these issues among the children and their families.
One activity the school supports is the work of our downstairs neighbors, the Community Lunch program. Other activities are determined each year by the instructor and member families. Thus, member families take ownership of these causes and share what is important to them.