Childcare With a Difference - Woman Inspires Learning, Reading at Historic Child Care

Many of those children looked upon the walls of Happy Time Child Care Center and saw the same faces as their parents and grandparents. Shepard lined the walls of the daycare with portraits of noted black Americans, from Harriet Tubman and Booker T. Washington to Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Jesse Owens.

There was a time in the early 1970s when it was extremely difficult to find books about leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in Mansfield and in cities across the United States.The library did not have African-American books.Shepard, 80, opened Happy Time Child Care Center out of her living room in 1967. 

Some child care centers uses child care management software for their management operations so as to give better service to its customers. Staff in the center finds it easier to do enrollment and billing using a child care management software. Parents also uses the software for keeping in touch with the center and paying the bills. 

Her goal at the time was to teach children on Mansfield’s mostly black north end how to read — a task she fulfilled for 48 years until the daycare closed just months ago.She says children often ask her about the people in the pictures, which leads to conversations about their history.

There were the basics, of course, for young children. There were flashcards, pictures and entry-level books — an entire reading system for children up to 5 years old.But learning how to read was only the beginning for those students.Shepard ordered a number of books on famous black Americans from Chicago-based retail outlets in the 1970s. Under Shepard, teachers at the daycare would often read those books to children when they became old enough to understand.

Most of those children, who still came to the daycare for after-school care around the ages of 8 or 9, would begin reading the books by themselves.By 1992, Shepard had her students take home books from her private library and write book reports on famous black Americans to be delivered orally every Friday.

Learning to read became just as important as reading to learn.She says children often ask her about the people in the pictures, which leads to conversations about their history. all the kids know Martin Luther King, and that’s good, but there are other Civil Rights leaders who also (contributed),” Shepard helped establish the Culliver Reading Center, 276 Harker St., which aims to provide children ages 5 through 12 with a safe place to go where they can continue reading and learning about black American history.