Schools across the country continue to cope with the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on children, and at the preschool level, that means dealing with behavioral problems.
This week, several preschools throughout the Black Belt reopened their doors with a hopeful solution in place: the Hatch Ignite Table.
Essentially, the devices are giant, purple tablets programmed with games to teach young children communication and social skills. Every child has his or her own profile uploaded onto the table, and while up to four children gather around for a time-limited play session, the table keeps track of each student’s new skills, successes and failures.
Later, teachers can view insight reports and utilize that information to create more tailored learning plans for students. Vice President of Hatch Learning Nate Cox called the tables “teacher time-savers,” as they allow teachers to have more time for small-group instruction and individualized learning.
“We believe in playful learning,” he said. “For those littlest of learners, their best engagement, the highest results and outcomes come through play. It’s when you and I come together, and we share an experience. We have a laugh, we communicate and we work together.”
Cox and other members of the Hatch team traveled to Selma last week to meet with the dozens of Alabama preschool teachers who will be putting the Ignite Tables to use this school year with their three-, four- and five-year-olds.
The Black Belt Community Foundation purchased 20 of the devices for use in each of its six Head Start schools located in Choctaw, Dallas, Marengo and Wilcox counties.
But with an $11,000 price tag on each table, some of the preschool teachers were unsure of what exactly they were walking into when they arrived at training day in Selma. Some worried about their own ability to operate the new technology, and others didn’t understand what could make a device for kids this valuable.
As soon as the teachers got the chance to play with the tables themselves, concerns subsided. The room full of adults seemed to transform into a classroom filled with five-year-olds. In groups of four, the teachers plopped down on the floor and started making their way through the table’s games.
One group sorted bugs into color-coded jars while another customized their rocket ships and made pizza. Each new game demonstrated the way that participants needed to listen, pay attention, work together and talk through disagreements.
“I’m really excited for the kids. I think they’re going to love this,” Wilcox County Head Start teacher Myesha Pettway said. “And the table picking up kids’ communications skills and how they’re playing together, it’s going to help us a lot with gathering information and tracking the skills they’re learning.”
Pettway and the other Black Belt Head Start teachers will be the first in Alabama to adopt this kind of early learning tech, but leadership from both the BBCF and Hatch don’t think they’ll be the last.
“Often the narrative is that we’re playing catch up or we’re just making do with the bare minimum here in the Black Belt,” BBCF spokesperson Daron Harris said. “But today, guess what? We’re the first.”
Because of how rural the region is and its high poverty rates, the Black Belt can have a skewed representation in people’s minds. The BBCF works to lift its residents up by supporting the arts, hosting relationship-building events, offering vital resources, and most of all, advocating for education.
“What I’m focused on is the socio-emotional support,” BBCF Head Start Director Taquila Monroe said. “When the kids came back from the pandemic, they had a lot of challenging behaviors, and a lot of the skills that they learned prior to the pandemic, they had lost a lot of those skills.”
In Monroe’s eyes, the tables are a way to guarantee that kids are getting at least 20-30 minutes of organized social learning every day they come to class.
“We decided to invest in our children’s well-being,” she said. “Hatch Learning answered the call with their Ignite Tables.”
Hadley Hitson covers children’s health, education and welfare for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser.