Success Stories
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Marciann Gaston, former Lane student and recipient of Lane's Distinguished Alumni Award |
story by Chris Cunningham
“For me, LCC has been the foundation of everything I've done professionally.” —Marciann Gaston
It happened again. A bright-eyed young woman approached Lane alumna Marciann Gaston in a public place and introduced herself. She reminded Gaston, regional manager for Lane County Head Start, that they had met 17 years earlier, when the young woman was a Head Start preschooler. “I remember because you gave me books to take home,” the young woman said earnestly.
Gaston says this former preschooler is now in college, “loving it and happy.”
Such frequent encounters reflect Gaston’s idea of success. “To be even a small part of a child’s life” and to know that those relationships make a difference still thrills Gaston, who has been working for the last 17 years with Head Start—the federally funded preschool program that serves Lane County’s low-income, highrisk three-to-five year-olds and their families.
It’s Head Start’s focus on the entire family—not just the child—that differentiates the program from others, explains Gaston, who is one of eight regional managers in Lane County. The county serves Junction City to the north, Cottage Grove to the south, Oakridge to the east, and Florence to the west.
Head Start assigns a family advocate to each parent, who invariably is struggling financially and may be homeless, a victim of domestic abuse or has an incarcerated spouse. “You have grownups who are often struggling,” Gaston says, “due to the multiple demands and pressures of surviving with few resources.”
When parents first bring their children to Head Start, staff frequently notice dysfunctional coping patterns between parents and children, or between spouses, Gaston says. “But you get parents involved, and they can start breaking those patterns.”
In the family advocacy program, parents meet teachers and assigned advocates to develop educational goals for their children. Parents also have input on policy, hiring and firing, and curricula development. Some lobby in Washington, D.C. to ensure that the program remains adequately funded. Equally important, advocates “check in” with parents simply to see if they need anything.
Although Lane County’s Head Start has grown from 250 families in 2000 to 789 families in 2004, Gaston points out that only half of those in Lane County who are eligible are enrolled because of funding limitations. “Every child should be able to have a quality preschool experience before they go into kindergarten to help them with socialization and to understand how much fun learning can be.”
Gaston’s vigorous advocacy for Lane County’s children and families extends well beyond the walls of Head Start, says Lane’s Early Childhood administrative specialist Karen Wygle. As a member of Lane’s Early Childhood Education Advisory Committee, Gaston collaborates with several child welfare agencies “to promote the professional status of early childhood educators,” Wygle says. She helps “educate parents about the importance of early childhood education, and strengthens our knowledge of just exactly what quality pre-school programs should look like.”
Gaston’s career in early childhood education fell into place quite naturally in 1977, the year she began attending Lane. She was juggling psychology and human service classes with a work study position in the campus preschool when program director Linda Riepe—now retired—told her about Lane’s early childhood curriculum. Riepe had a “gigantic influence on me,” Gaston says. “I wanted to be like her when I grew up.”
Lane’s early childhood curriculum had a huge influence on Gaston too. “The thing I loved about the program at Lane was that you could get your theory first, then go into the lab and find out if it was real or not,” Gaston says.
After Gaston earned her associate of science degree in 1979, she landed an early childhood internship in the campus Child Development Center. Shortly after, she filled an instructional assistant position on an interim basis and later accepted the position permanently. The following year, Gaston was promoted as head teacher, a position she held for three years before leaving to start her own family.
In 1987, she returned to the workforce through a part-time position at Head Start. From there her career spiraled upward through supervisory, coordinator and now regional management position.
“I’m really appreciative of all that Lane gave me in the past … ,” says Gaston, whose mother and sister also graduated from Lane. “For me, LCC has been the foundation of everything I’ve done professionally.”
