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Impact: Small Steps Make Big Changes
Robert G. Combs Language Preschool prepares tomorrow’s students
Small voices fill the air behind Lewis and Clark halls. It’s 10 a.m. on a Monday morning and a group of preschoolers from the Robert G. Combs Language Preschool and their speech clinicians are going to playtime. An MU student clinician stops to ask a child a question, listening intently as the girl carefully forms her response. Laughter and language skills go hand in hand as the preschool prepares tomorrow’s clinicians and elementary students to succeed.
Student clinicians model proper sound formations with students at the Robert G. Combs Language Preschool. Photo by Gene Royer.The Robert G. Combs Language Preschool is a joint effort of the School of Health Professions’ Department of Communication Science and Disorders and local Scottish Rite Freemasons, whose primary charity is assisting children with communication problems through the Scottish Rite’s RiteCare programs. Since opening in 1999, the preschool has served 89 children and their families. A $25,000 gift from the Scottish Rite’s RiteCare Board of Directors in June of this year continued the relationship. The Scottish Rite has given $100,000 to the preschool since 1999. RiteCare Board President Mark Belcher, BS Ag Ed ’88, M Ed. ’02, says it’s a good investment in the future.
“The Robert G. Combs Preschool provides excellent services,” Belcher says. “The clinicians are top quality and MU is one of the best educational institutions that provides training in communication therapy.”
Dana Fritz is a clinical professor in communication science and disorders (CSD) and director of the preschool. Seniors and first-year graduate students in CSD and occupational therapy compose the preschool’s clinician staff. Accredited for 16 students per semester, the preschool offers classes from 9-11 a.m. on Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/ Thursday in the fall, winter and summer semesters. Some of the three- to five- year- old participants have speech and language delays, others are enrolled to encourage development of social skills. The clinician-to-student ratio is low, usually one student clinician to two or three preschool students. Fritz says the preschool’s purpose is two-fold: educating and training the aspiring clinicians and serving children and their families.
“This offers a practical experience for our students,” Fritz says. “They work closely with the preschool students and communicate regularly with the parents. Parents offer valuable feedback about their children. These are parents whose children have had fragile, sometimes scary beginnings with slow progress, so they can really give a perspective on how far their child has come.”
On any given day, parents like Sharon Hubbuch gather around the school’s oneway observation window watching their child learn new skills. Her three-year-old son Teddy loves the preschool.
“I can see it in his self-confidence, his personality and his speech is so much better,” Hubbuch says. “They’ve brought out a whole new Teddy! I also like the window because I can later talk with him about the activities. I can also watch the clinicians and take some of the skills I learn from them to use at home.”
Each week is different as lesson plans follow a “book of the week.” The books are read at least four times and all daily activities relate to their theme. For instance, “Three Bears” theme activities might include making oatmeal for a snack, making construction paper bears with brown cotton ball “fur,” singing songs about bears and making sensory boards with various textured surfaces. Some activities are clinician-driven, others are child-directed.
“Research has shown that a balance of child- and clinician-directed opportunities is most effective,” Fritz says. “Repetition is also a very important part of sealing new vocabulary and concepts. Since our daily activities, even snack time, revolve around a book theme, we know we are repeating related vocabulary many times in the course of our mornings together.”
Fritz says the Scottish Rite provides general support for the preschool and scholarships for qualifying students. “We would not be here without them,” she says.
Indeed it was Robert Combs, a 32 degree Scottish Rite member interested in preschool language development and special needs students, who brought the Scottish Rite and School of Health Professions together. After Combs’ death in an automobile accident, the school was named in his honor. Belcher, an agricultural education instructor at the Moberly Area Technical Center in nearby Moberly, says that in the “No Child Left Behind” era, the preschool provides an important early start for children.
“You must address these issues at an early age to make a difference,” Belcher says. “That is what happens here at the preschool.”
Belcher’s wife Beth is an active supporter of her husband’s efforts on behalf of Scottish Rite and the preschool. As a nurse, she knows the difficult beginnings some children experience.
“You see children struggling in schools and you realize the work that has to be done,” Beth says. “We have been very pleased with what has happened for these children here.”
The first students who attended the preschool are now third graders, and Fritz enjoys seeing them out in the community. “They don’t often remember their preschool clinicians,” Fritz says, “but their parents remember us very well. It’s exciting to see the changes we have helped bring to their lives and hear how well they are doing.”
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Scottish Rite President Mark Belcher presents the group’s $25,000 gift in support of the Robert G. Combs Language Preschool to Communication Science and Disorder Chair Judith Goodman. Looking on, left to right, are preschool director Dana Fritz and Scottish Rite members Jerry Hunter, Don Fairley and Keith Neese.
Page last updated on: August 25, 2009
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