Recently, our team had the chance to sit down with one of the participating center owners in our Kindergarten Readiness Collaborative (KRC), the fabulous Rhonda Washington, and ask her 5 Questions about her career and experience with Future Ready Five.
Question 1: Please tell us your name and the name of your Center!
My name is Rhonda Washington and I am a FCC, which means a Family Childcare Professional, at Washington Learning & Development Center.
Question 2: How long have you been teaching?
I have been teaching since 1993. For 32 years I have worked in a childcare center, that’s where I started off. My children were small and I was a student in college studying something completely different—Biochemistry—and I needed somewhere for my children to go while I went to school, so I enrolled them in a childcare center and I worked there part-time to be able to afford it. I fell in love with it, and the center needed me more, so I changed my major.
Question 3: What made you fall in love with early childcare and want to work with kids?
I fell in love with childcare, I do believe when I had children. I wanted to be with them most of the time. I enjoyed watching them learn things, and when I started working at the childcare center I got to see other children get some of the same things my children got at home. To see the twinkle in their eyes when they learned something new or when they discovered something
Question 4: What is your favorite thing you’ve learned in the Kindergarten Readiness Collaborative?
Well, I have to say, the use of Heggerty®. The Heggerty® curriculum is absolutely wonderful. It connects teaching to the students in a whole different way. They’re taught a systematic way of learning the alphabet—the sounds, how to blend, rhyme, all of those things. It gets them ready for kindergarten. That’s my absolute favorite. But if I was to talk about instruction-wise, it would be the things that we learn (in the workshops). Like the back story of emergent writing. I always did handwriting, but I didn’t do it quite like that, or with the knowledge that this is the order that you should see it. So just now having that knowledge, I know something else to look for and how to approach it differently.
Question 5: What is your favorite success story?
I have one particular child that’s going to kindergarten in the Fall. I’ve had him since he was an infant. I struggled over the years because he always seemed to be, not just one step, but maybe three steps behind the other children his age. He had a hard time even pronouncing words so it was hard to understand him because he had to have teeth pulled when he was one. We were already at some deficits already. But just this year, in his last year in preschool, he has gone from not knowing any of the alphabet, to knowing all 26, to knowing them in upper and lowercase, and all 26 sounds. He was able to retain it and keep it. So that’s been one of the biggest things. Because it took him to the age of four to even get his colors. This last year he just blossomed. Heggerty® changed the game for him.
The 2025-2026 Kindergarten Readiness Collaborative runs September 2025 through June 2026. You can learn more about the program and apply before July 31st, 2025, by Clicking Here.
Special thanks to Rhonda Washington from Washington Learning & Development Center for agreeing to participate in this feature!