Opening the door to Heather Sullivan's classroom, the happy shrieks of children at play spilled out into the hallway of Lee High School.
Inside her room, 16 preschool children, ages 3 to 5, played noisily in groups with nine high-school students, dressed in blue smocks, wearing paper turkey hats.
The only thing that distinguished this particular day from any other were the hats.
Sullivan is the director of the Little Lancers preschool program, in which 28 high school students create lesson plans and activities for their younger counterparts while she supervises.
"I'm kind of like the principal," said Sullivan, who went through a similar program while attending McLean High School. "On Mondays and Fridays, I teach things like how to plan lessons, formulate objectives and how to evaluate the little kids' progress. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the preschoolers come in for three hours and the high schoolers do all the teaching and evaluating," she said.
EVERY WEEK, the students have a theme to center their lessons around, like safety or holidays, Sullivan said. "Every week, in our lessons, we cover language arts, math, science, music and movement and art. The students do all the teaching and evaluating of the preschoolers and I grade the high school students on how they taught, their preparation and lessons."
The program is open to students in their junior or senior year of high school, she said, a time when most students have the freedom of taking a two-time block elective because their core requirements have been met.
"At the end of the year, the students who have been in the program for two years can take a national exam that, if they pass, will give them a certification on par with what auto mechanic and cosmetology students receive for their training," Sullivan said.
Most of the students taking the class — all girls this year, although she has had boys in the past — have hopes of becoming teachers after college, Sullivan said. Some students want to be prepared for working in a preschool or day care environment.
"We have an agreement with Northern Virginia Community College where if the student has a B or better average in this class, it'll count as seven credits in their early childhood program," Sullivan said.
The preschool program gives students a chance to see what it's like to be a teacher, years before they'd get the same experience in college, she said. "When they're not teaching, they're working on scheduling their lessons, planning, doing book work ... there's not a lot of down time. It teaches them time management, which they'll need in the future."
FOR THE PRESCHOOLERS, it helps provide socialization skills needed for kindergarten, and "parents see how their child grows through the course of the year," Sullivan said.
She knows from first-hand experience the value of lessons learned in the program.
"I was an early childhood student in McLean and I'm on the other side of the desk now," she said. "When I got to college, I was so far ahead of my class as a freshman and sophomore because I already had this background. This will make life so much easier for them."
Eboni Pasley, an 11th-grade student, said she wanted to enroll in the program because she loves children.
"I want to be a nurse, so I think this'll help me later on when I'm working with children," she said.
Planning lessons and teaching children has been challenging and at times she thought the course would be easier than it is, but she's enjoyed the experience.
"The kids have such distinct personalities," Pasley laughed. "Some are really outgoing, some are really shy, but they all love to play and color."
For Ashley Redemacher, becoming a teacher is a family tradition. "All the women in my family have been teachers for generations," she said.
"The best part of the day is when the kids come in in the morning, they're all excited," she said. "We have show and tell for them on Tuesdays and they get so happy to bring in toys and tell us stories about them."
Redemacher said baby-sitting has become easier since she started the class. "I've learned so much about how to interact with children," she said.
AS THE YOUNGEST child in her family, Michelle Penalosa spends most of her time during family functions playing with two cousins who are toddlers.
"We're all having so much fun," she said, helping one of the students eat her Thanksgiving lunch in the cafeteria.
Electives like this course will be more useful in her future than an engineering or carpentry class, she said. "If you're going to be a parent, this class prepares you for that. This is a great teaching opportunity, it teaches you things you can actually use."
Working with such young children has made Jacquelyn Terkhorn a more patient person.
"The kids have ever-changing moods," she said. "But at the end of the day, they'll come up and hug me, which makes me really happy."
Although she didn't expect to do so much teaching, Terkhorn said "if they accomplish something, I know I taught them the right way. I love working with the children."