Carl Foster expressed feelings of nostalgia as he returned to San Jose State campus on Sept. 18, fifty years after he created the university’s Child Development Center.
Foster created the center under the Center for the Study of Contemporary Issues, which was a series of lecture-format classes offered between Fall 1970 and Spring 1972 that was administered by students and taught by SJSU faculty members.
“We were the third effort to start a childcare center,” Foster said.
Foster said the center developed through one of those courses: the Child Care Center Research Action Group.
“I hand picked [15 students to work on the development of the center] because I was determined to succeed,” he said. “I wanted people who weren't just looking for an easy class.”
Foster said in creating the center and selecting a location, he and his team needed to ensure it was held up to a high standard and was kid friendly, which included having enough space and short water fountains.
“As a matter of fact, the center started in St. Paul's United Methodist Church on South 10th Street and that was the first site for the center, it was a brand-new church,” Foster said.
He said the first operational day for the center was on Sept. 18, 1972.
The Child Development Center remains a part of SJSU and is now located on South Eighth Street, just across the street from campus.
Jane Zamora, Child Development Center director, said today, the center works to serve the campus community by providing high-quality and affordable childcare for students who are finishing up their degrees.
The nonprofit center serves children ages 4 months through 5 years and is licensed for 110 children, according to its webpage.
“We prioritize our students, so students first, then faculty, staff and alumni, because the waitlist to come to the center is pretty extensive,” Zamora said regarding who gets priority registration to the center.
She said the program hasn’t been under the department of child and adolescent development program since 2000, which is when it moved to its current building and began being under the direction of Associated Students.
Zamora said the Child Development Center is about more than just childcare.
“We just want to provide a learning environment for the children, so when they are leaving us to go to kindergarten and elementary school, they have all those skills to be successful,” she said.
Zamora said the center doesn’t teach children set lessons or have a main curriculum.
“We take observations on just them when they’re out in the environment, when they’re exploring, interactions when they’re just engaging in play,” she said. “We take notes and we use those notes to see: How are they doing? How are they progressing in these learning domains?”
Zamora said the center also works in collaboration with the school’s department of child and adolescent development, from which she recruits student-staff within that major to work with the children.
“We consider ourselves a teaching center as well for [students],” Zamora said.
Kassandra Rancourt, an SJSU student-staff worker who is a teacher’s assistant, works within the infant-toddler side of the center.
“The impact that we see especially being in the infant toddler section, we see a lot of development in a short amount of time,” said Rancourt, who received her bachelor’s degree in child development and is currently studying for her master’s degree in early childhood special education.
Rancourt said student-staff workers like herself help the children with basic developmental skills within their natural environment.
“It’s really fun to see that either the activities or just that the support we’re giving the kids is helping them,” she said.
Rancourt said the functions of the Child Development Center are smooth and easy these days but were especially daunting during the coronavirus pandemic.
She said strict policy and guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including social distancing, sanitation and online learning through Zoom, plagued the center.
“COVID hit and everything shifted,” Rancourt said.
Rancourt said the Child Development Center staff wouldn’t take anymore enrollment, workers were restricted to one room for their shifts and children were limited to every other room in the center, all the way down to the preschool side.
“When it came to sanitizing toys, surface areas, mats, all of it was soapy water and bleach, we had to wait five minutes and you’re doing this cycle at least three times a day,” Rancourt said.
“The issue was that you couldn’t do it in the vicinity of the kids,” she said
Rancourt said today, the Child Development Center has much more “wiggle room” with COVID-19 guidelines and has returned to a sense of normalcy.
As the 50th anniversary was upon the center this year, Zamora said the staff have been delighted by its effects so far including the chance to give back to students.
Zamora also said she loved meeting the center’s founder Carl Foster, who visited the center in late September.
“I can see how passionate he was,” she said. “It hit me a little bit harder to see someone like him, who started it and for us now who are the future of the center to see the way we’ve progressed and the way that we’re just moving forward, as he said, keeping this legacy alive for that were still providing care for families on campus.”
Foster said he hopes to host a celebration for the center that will give more attention to the resources they provide for students, to how much they give back to the students in the field of childcare and its children and parents.
“I want [the Child Development Center] to be a resource,” Foster said. “I want it to grow, not just hang on.”
