Roxbury Weston Preschool’s impact continues 60 years on

On the carpeted floor of a classroom, Kristina Chin leads a group of 4- and 5-year-olds through the song “Jingle Bells.” Hand-drawn kinaras and menorahs decorated the windows in the weeks leading up to winter break, when students learned about different holidays their classmates celebrated, such as Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Three Kings’ Day.

These students are part of a 60-year-old tradition of sharing cultures and celebrating diversity at Roxbury Weston Preschool, a school born from a 1965 program that worked to integrate white and Black children from Weston and Boston.

Robin Levin, the preschool’s director, said the program focuses on community and kindness for every student, highlighting the diverse cultures that come through the door.

“From pictures on the wall, to baby dolls, to having crayons of different skin tones, we want students to feel included,” she said. “I think people take kids this age for granted. They’re young and naive, but they’re sponges.”

In 1965, during the civil rights movement, Weston and Roxbury residents created a summer camp that split time between both places, according to an article by one of the founders, Harriet Elliston, in a 2017 Weston Historical Society Bulletin.

The preschool opened a year later in Weston’s St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. According to the Historical Society Bulletin, the early work of the preschool helped lay the groundwork in convincing Weston to join the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), a program founded the same year that continues to help integrate schools in Massachusetts.

Today, the school teaches students from both Weston and Boston, busing in students from city neighborhoods such as Jamaica Plain and Roslindale. It is now housed in the First Parish Church, although it is unaffiliated with the church.

Grayson Kasdon is a Weston resident who teaches 3- and 4-year-olds. Her brother-in-law and his children went to the school. Kasdon said she joined the staff to help promote diversity in town.

“We truly believe that exposure will lead to more tolerance at a young age,” Kasdon said. “Particularly with how the world is right now, these social skills are so important. How to listen and be respectful and kind.”

The preschool has seen multiple generations of families pass through its doors. Loni Jackman-Tejeda attended while her mom worked at the school. Now, she sends her two kids in from Roxbury.

“My earliest memories are of the friends I made there and my mom worked there. I always remembered it being a really warm place to be,” she said. “It’s been a special full-circle moment.”

Former student and current board member Henry Kasdon, a Weston resident also has fond memories of the school. As a child, he called it “ladder school” because there was a small, indoor jungle gym that he played on with his friends.

It was only in adulthood that he realized the impact that going to school with students of different races had on him. He said that meeting children from different backgrounds that early in age, they got to know each other before anyone could tell them they were different.

“That didn’t hit me until later in life because I couldn’t understand why people say everyone is racist,” he said. “No, you have to learn that, racism. You have to learn why we hate someone else.”

Kasdon sent his children to the school and continues to have a hand in the program as a board member and a hip-hop teacher.

The school has an outdoor play structure now, but kindness remains the key focus, Levin said. When difficult topics come up in class, teachers address them, but class time is focused on teaching social and emotional skills.

While the mission remains the same, some adjustments have been made to the curriculum to respond to a changing world.

When the preschool returned from its pandemic-induced lockdown during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the staff decided to add mindfulness to the curriculum because students were having more trouble self-regulating in the world of COVID-19, police violence and mass protests. Levin said students were having more tantrums and breakdowns.

“Mindfulness is always important, but now it needs to be part of the everyday curriculum,” she said.

Although many families live far from the school, Levin and her teachers work to make sure parents are engaged in the school lives of their children by giving them chances to engage in the classroom and to get photos of their students throughout the day.

Board President Kerri-Lynne Kellam is a Boston-based parent who attended Weston schools through METCO, and she brings her perspective as a city parent to her work on the board.

“It’s important for me as a parent to go back for the same reason it was important for my mother and for my aunt and uncle,” Kellam said. “It’s the access to the resources and the diversity on both sides. It’s diversity for my girls, and it also creates diversity for the other students in this town, too. It creates a space that’s like what the real world looks like, but starts it at an early age.”