Christina Neblick has been in the Children’s Services department of Bost for nearly 11 years.  She began her tenure going into each class so the child development aides could take breaks.  When there was an opening to be in the classroom full-time, she moved into that position.  Then Christina applied for and was promoted to the Assistant Site Supervisor position.  She returned to the classroom in the Arkansas Better Chance program, eventually becoming the Lead Teacher. Now, Christina is an Early Child Development Specialist, which is similar to a Certified Teacher.  She creates lesson plans for the classrooms, performs the annual review testing of the children, helps with intake referrals and new child testing, just to name a few tasks.

 

Christina takes great care and pride in developing the lesson plans for the children.  These lessons give the classroom teachers structure and activities to work with the children on gross motor skills, fine motor skills and social/emotional skills.  These skills and concepts can be learned through individual play or small group play and /activities.  Along with the lesson plans, Christina helps to organizes the classrooms into centers, which is especially helpful in attaining and maintaining the Better Beginning Certifications.  The centers, like block, dramatic play, art, and library, let the children know the appropriate toys to play with and help them to work on age-appropriate goals related to those centers, but it just looks like play to the kids!

 

Spending time in each classroom, working with the children and the classroom teachers to see each child grow closer to achieving their goals, which is Christina’s favorite part of her job may very well be the reason she, and the Bost Early Intervention team, are so successful. Though it often is sad for long term teachers and caregivers like Christina, it is also extremely rewarding when a child achieves the ultimate goal of testing out of the Bost program!  In fact, Christina recently saw one of the children she had in her class as an infant.  He’s now in second grade and his mother said he is doing so great!  This shows exactly why what is done at Bost Children’s Services, by Christina and many of her coworkers, matters: because each child’s journey matters.