Mission Neighborhood Centers, Inc. (MNC) has been providing comprehensive child development services in San Francisco since 1969. Currently, MNC has nine child development sites providing early education and care to more than four hundred preschool children. A variety of preschool options are available, including part-day Head Start, full-day Head Start/ State Preschool, and full-day tuition-based (private pay ) services. Since 2010, MNC Child Development Program also offers full-day, year-round subsidized care for infants & toddlers at the Southeast Families United site on Evans Avenue in the Bay View District.
Early Childhood Philosophy
Mission Neighborhood Centers, Inc. provides nurturing early childhood learning environments that truly reflect the values, language and cultural identity of the children served. Teachers intentionally promote and support dual language learning (Spanish and English) and actively engage children in age-appropriate, stimulating experiences to bring about optimal learning for all children to grow to their fullest potential.
What We Believe About Children
- Children are active, competent partners in their own learning. They learn best when curriculum content is relevant to their real-life experiences and engage all their senses.
- Children learn best in classrooms that reflect and support their sense of identity, culture, language, and family composition.
- Children learn best in an environment in which they feel emotionally secure and have warm, supportive relationships with adults who love and value them as individuals and support their emotional and social development.
- Children learn best when they are allowed to take responsibility in the classroom, participate in making rules, solve their own problems, and have input into the curriculum & daily activities.
- Children who are English-language learners benefit from evidence-based dual language instruction to support them in their home language while they acquire English as a second language.
- All children benefit from learning in classrooms in which teachers are enthusiastically committed to fostering full inclusion of children with special needs with their typically developing peers.
