Voices from the Field: How Jayleese Le Blanc supports our Advocacy Network

“I want everyone to think back to peak COVID-19 and remember the struggle of taking care of their own children in their homes, of keeping their children entertained, and keeping them educated and fed and clean,” Jayleese Le Blanc says. “And then I want everyone to think of the value of the early educators who do this work.”

Le Blanc, a former preschool teacher, is the program assistant for Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network, a year-long advocacy experience for emerging leaders in the field, and she is helping to raise the voices of early educators across the state. 

When she was young, Le Blanc was an older sibling who took care of her younger sisters. The summer before college, when she needed a job, she reached out to her grandmother who worked in the early education and care field and that led to a job working at a child care center in New Bedford, Mass., where Le Blanc had grown up. 

It was a job that taught her a lot. 

“I could see that some of the adults I was working with were burned out,” Le Blanc says. “The center was understaffed and over-populated, and people were underpaid. As an 18-year-old with a ton of energy who was there for only three months, I could put my best foot forward in a lot of ways that other teachers couldn’t.”

Le Blanc also saw the struggles of families. 

“Sometimes kids would be dropped off by their parents in the morning, and DCF would pick them up in the afternoon,” Le Blanc says of the state’s Department of Children and Families, which sometimes takes children into protective custody. 

As a college student at Northeastern University, when Le Blanc needed a work-study job, she chose to work in the university’s children’s center. And when she graduated, she worked at the center full time. 

After having her first daughter, Le Blanc went back to work at the Harbor City School in East Boston. This was during the middle of the pandemic, and Strategies for Children was running its 9:30 Call, working to keep the early education and care field connected. The director of Le Blanc’s program, Sarah Slater, was frequently on those calls, and Le Blanc had begun to wonder how she herself could have an impact on the field outside the classroom.

It was Slater who suggested that Le Blanc apply for a job at Strategies. This led to a new connection with Strategies staff members, who, later that year, offered Le Blanc a different opportunity, the role of Advocacy Network program assistant. 

“I wasn’t sure what the job was going to look like,” Le Blanc recalls. “Participants receive Advocacy 101 training, and then they get to do their own thing. I wasn’t sure how that would go because everyone was doing the Advocacy Network during their personal time, and I knew what it was like to be in the classroom, I knew how tired and drained they could feel at the end of the day.”

What Le Blanc found in the Advocacy Network was the power of commitment. 

“Everyone has this common goal of trying to make the field better, of having it be better for kids, better for families, and better for educators; and everyone accomplished that in their own way.”

When participants first join the Advocacy Network, some are outspoken, Le Blanc says, and some are quieter.

“But after every meeting, I feel like everyone is invigorated, more excited for the field, and more willing to, say, write to a legislator the next day.”

She adds: “I didn’t expect to be as excited or as motivated in these meetings. I thought I would just be assisting other people, but I feel like they’re also helping me. They give me motivation and hope for the field.” 

The payoff of participating in the Advocacy Network?

“I hope that everyone learns that their voice matters. That’s one thing that this work can instill in people, that what they do matters. Even if you feel like you’re doing something very small, it’s actually important.”

Le Blanc also learned more about Massachusetts. 

“People in Massachusetts tend to forget about Western Mass all the time, and I thought that was a running joke. I didn’t understand the implications that educators in Western Mass feel like people don’t care. They feel like they’re forgotten, like they don’t have resources, and that’s terrible. When centers aren’t getting the resources they need, kids aren’t getting the resources that they need. It turns into a cycle of adults not being able to give kids what they need. Then the kids grow up to be adults who might work in areas where they don’t get what they need.”

“Or there’s Cape Cod where there’s a shortage of early education centers on the far Cape, around Truro. Everyone loves the Cape. But they love it as a summer community, and they don’t invest in the year-round community in the ways that they should.”

For Le Blanc, the advocacy message that the whole state needs to hear is clear: Early Educators across the state should have all the resources they need to provide the best experiences for children. 

Do you work in the early childhood field?
Would you be willing to share your story with us?
If so, please email us at info@strategiesforchildren.org
and we will consider featuring you in a future Voices from the Field blog.