As an early educator, Alexus Garcia draws on her training, her skills, and her conviction that schools should be joyful and safe spaces for children.

Today, she’s a lead teacher at Allo Montessori Preschool, where she teaches children who are 22 to 34 months old. She’s also a member of Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network she is educating families about childhood trauma.

Becoming an early educator

Garcia’s career began when she was in high school—thanks to Massachusetts’ Career and Technical Education Programs—also known as Chapter 74 programs—which offer vocational training in a wide range of areas including veterinary science, plumbing, carpentry, graphic design, and power equipment technology. 

As a student at Old Rochester Regional High School, Garcia participated in her school’s Chapter 74 Early Childhood Education program. She took a year-long child development course, then worked in preschool classes where she learned about implementing different curricula. 

“I always knew since I was a kid that I wanted to be a teacher,” Garcia says. “I grew up in an unsafe home environment, and school was the only safe place I had. I really invested myself in school. I love learning. And because school was so safe for me, it gave me the inner drive to want to be a teacher. 

“As I’ve gotten older, that drive turned into passion to be the person I needed as a child. That’s where I’m at now.”

Garcia considered being a math teacher or an art teacher. She thought about teaching in middle school and high school. In college, she studied sociology and thought about working for Child Protective Services. But for Garcia, two guiding facts stood out: infant teachers seemed like superheroes; and Garcia felt a connection to younger children.

“I have a sixth sense with younger kids. I’m able to read body language pretty well, and I can figure out a lot of what their needs are. So I do really well working with children who are nonverbal or don’t have that skill set yet, or might have some verbal skills, but don’t have the cognitive development yet to be able to exactly tell me what they need.”

Garcia’s favorite part of being a teacher?

“Watching kids grow. It’s nice to have that reminder of the whimsy of the world. Kids just bring this light to you everyday. They give me a lot of hope for the future, and they give me a lot of drive for the future.”

Being an advocate

“I’ve always wanted to be a part of the community. I always want to be out there and helpful,” Garcia says, explaining her attraction to advocacy.

In high school, she was a volunteer tutor at a local elementary school. In college, Garcia organized an event for Human Rights Week: a discussion on human trafficking, that included representatives from a local organization as well as Garcia’s aunt, a nurse, who spoke about the healthcare impact on survivors. 

As a member of the Advocacy Network, Garcia is focusing on childhood trauma. Her strategy is to help kids and educate parents. To do this, she ran a toy drive in December and for the event she made brochures about trauma that explained what childhood trauma is and how it can be prevented and addressed. Garcia also helped run a clothing drive in January and engaged dozens of families there as well, sharing resources and information on trauma. 

“A lot of people think childhood trauma means neglect, emotional or physical abuse, or parental issues. But it goes way beyond that. It’s also toxic stress. It’s financial stress within a family. It’s natural disasters. It’s an unsafe community. So, I was trying to use the brochures to educate families, but unfortunately, the brochures weren’t as successful as the donations were.”

Undaunted, Garcia is trying again. She’s working on toy and clothing drives, and she’s creating a survey to ask parents what they are interested in learning about policies, funding, and any other government practices that affect them and their children. The survey also includes questions about parent readiness. Once she has the survey results, Garcia hopes that children can make cards—using crayons, stickers, paper, and glue sticks—that explain what parents want to know and that can be shared with state legislators. 

The next steps?

“I would like to create a state policy or be able to offer state grants to provide expecting families with a child development course. It could start with families who receive MassHealth benefits and grow from there. 

“The course would include preventative measures for childhood trauma, because for a lot of parents who struggle with emotional or physical abuse and neglect, there’s the inner frustration of not knowing what’s going on with their kids and not knowing what to do. If their child were learning something new, they would know how to provide support. 

“I would also like to see additional funding for part two of the class: how parents who already have kids can support their children.”

Another crucial strategy, Garcia says, is connecting families to supportive services—an experience Garcia herself did not have. 

“Some trauma comes from children not getting the diagnoses they need. I am a late-diagnosed autistic adult. The signs were there, but they were overlooked,” in part Garcia says because she was very social. “If I had been provided with support services as a child, a lot of the trauma I endured could have been, if not prevented, then at least lessened.”

Garcia knows that her goals are large. She knows they can’t be achieved immediately. But she’s going step by step, moving beyond her comfort zone, and connecting with people and policymakers. 

Painting a Bigger Policy Picture

Listen to Garcia, and you realize that she doesn’t just want to educate parents and policymakers about early childhood development, she wants to educate everyone. 

One key lesson is how rich early childhood programs can be. 

“Kids learn the best from each other,” Garcia explains. It might be learning social cues about taking turns or respecting another child’s needs for personal space. And lessons learned early become pipelines for learning even more as children grow. “Having kids practice these lessons now will make them more resilient as adults.”

Garcia also has high hopes for Massachusetts’ future. She would love to see more early childhood classrooms with higher enrollment and lower student/teacher ratios. She would love to see parents building their skills and using more of their knowledge. Parents, she says, should also be able to form more connections with each other and provide more support for each other. 

Garcia would also love to see children in environments that meet their personal needs, whether that means more time outdoors, for example, or being in a Montessori program or in a family child care program or connected to more services. And, of course, in Garcia’s vision of the future, parents would have the knowledge they need to choose the best settings for their children. 

For example, at Allo, where Garcia teaches, “students learn to build skills independently through investigative play and Montessori inspired learning values. We spend lots of time outside exploring the neighborhood, watching the boats come in and leave the Navy Yard and sometimes we even take trips on the ferry! We have a playspace right on campus and each toddler classroom has their very own gross motor climbing space.”

Garcia’s bottom line: 

“If we want a successful society, we need very supportive early childhood programs. All education is important, but I specify early childhood because it’s not just academics. It’s not just ABCs, 123s. It’s self regulation. It’s social skills. It’s manners. It’s how to interact with materials. It’s how to interact with society. It’s how to learn and abide by expectations, how to build confidence. 

“Having the highest quality care and education would produce a more successful society.”