“It feels really good to have these young women on board. There is a lot of competition for educators now and you want to have ones that are really good and fit within the culture and meet our goals and expectations that we have and we found that in Dareon and Althea,” says One City Early Learning Center President and CEO Kaleem Caire.
One City Early Learning Center, which provides affordable, accessible, and high-quality preschool that partners with parents and the community to prepare young children for school success, is very excited to announce the hiring of Dareon Henderson and Althea Miller to join their growing team today.
“People in the community know them and that is very helpful when we’re trying to recruit parents and build familiarity at the school while at the same time reaching out to folks in the community,” Caire tells Madison365.
Located in the heart of the south side of Madison, one of the most racially, ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods in Wisconsin, One City Early Learning Center has a two-generation community impact model to build stability in families to ultimately cultivate healthy and successful children.
Henderson holds a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from Edgewood College where she also served as captain of the women’s basketball team. She will be the lead teacher for One City’s 2 1/2 to 3 1/2-year-old classroom. Henderson is also studying to be a trainer with Haywood Simmons’s pHitness Plus of Madison.
“Dareon has been in early education since she was a child – her mother had a childcare center that she helped with,” Caire says. “She has five professional years as a teacher in early education. With her, we are getting a lot of experience.”
Miller holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is working towards her master’s degree in multicultural education, also at UW-Madison. She will be the assistant teacher in the 3 ½-5-year-old classroom at One City. She is also a multi-dimensional visual and performing artist and an active member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority here in Madison.
“Althea was a teacher at the [Woodland] Montessori School. She has experience and the training and she loves working with children,” Caire says. “She brings an art background with spoken-word [poetry], voice, and artwork. She actually painted our holiday card for us last year. That was awesome.”
(Photo by Marcus Miles)
Caire believes that both of these new young women will help with One City’s mission of providing affordable, accessible, and high-quality preschools that partner with parents and the community to prepare young children for school success. A little over one year in, One City has already made great progress.
“We’re doing well. We’re have raised almost $2.3 million. We’re excited. A lot of people didn’t think we would raise that much money in that neighborhood – especially for a childcare center,” Caire says. “We still have a lot more money to raise but we want to keep growing. People have been very supportive and we appreciate it. They believe in what we are doing and want to help take us to the next level.”
