Cindy Lester calmly sat down on the child-sized couch with the 4-year-old who had been careening around her classroom all morning. He’d just flipped an empty soup bowl onto his head.
“You have a lot going on inside you today,” she said. “What’s going on? Are you tired?”
To a lot of teachers, a high-spirited boy like this one might seem like a problem — the sort of child who might spend preschool in timeouts, then graduate to the elementary school principal’s office. He might fall behind academically, his curiosity and creativity putting him at odds with classroom rules.
But Lester is determined to create a different future for this child and his classmates at Children of the Rising Sun Empowerment Center in Detroit. She devotes herself to that mission 10 hours a day, masterfully defusing tantrums, tying and retying shoelaces, and coaxing a roomful of 4-year-olds to sit relatively still for lessons in phonics and math.