Emily Centeio and Corina Coleman
Corina Coleman and Emily Centeio are two dedicated professionals at the Epiphany School Early Learning Center in Dorchester MA, each bringing a wealth of experience and expertise to their roles.
Emily Centeio is one of the Early Learning Center’s Co-Directors. Her role encompasses overseeing admissions, family engagement, and graduate support programs, all geared towards providing comprehensive support to both the children and their families. Emily began her journey in Family Services and student support at the middle school before delving into counseling and mental health training. Corina Coleman is the Early Learning Center’s Director of Admissions and certified Infant Child Mental Health Consultant with a background in early childhood education and 15 years of teaching experience. Her work focuses on fostering early relationships between teachers and students while providing crucial social, emotional, and psychoeducational support to parents.
At Epiphany, children thrive in an environment where they witness relationships firsthand, cultivating resilience and strong coping skills from an early age. The Center aims to nurture not just academic growth but also emotional well-being, ensuring that children feel secure to explore and learn.
“You do find that children are learning the most and taking the most risk when they feel comfortable and are connected with their caregivers.” - Corina Coleman
Central to Epiphany's mission is the power of familial involvement. Recognizing that the journey of education begins long before a child enters the classroom, the Center prioritizes building connections with families even before birth.
“We intentionally built this center knowing we were going to do intense work with families. When we opened up the Center six years ago, we hired a Director as well as a Family Engagement Coordinator. We knew we needed to work directly with families if we wanted to see the outcomes that we wanted to see in generations through our students.” - Emily Centeio
Epiphany stands out as a hub, offering a wealth of resources to support families in various aspects of their lives. Whether engaging with a Family Navigator to explore family planning options or acquiring essential items like car seats from the boutique, Epiphany serves as a comprehensive resource center. Their strong partnerships, such as with the Codman Health Center, ensure seamless information exchange as children join their community, fostering a supportive environment from birth onwards.
As a community-focused organization, Epiphany eagerly embraced the opportunity to engage in a maternal health discussion in collaboration with Vital CxNs. This dialogue allowed women to openly share their birth stories, commemorate achievements, and address shared obstacles. The goal of the conversation was to have more open, honest conversations about maternal health, specifically for mothers of color. Emily and Corina's reflections on the event highlight its significant role in fostering solidarity among mothers:
“We ended up having women from both our middle school and Early Learning Center program who had never met before, and in speaking on connections, they all had built this connection from each other, from hearing the stories that would never have happened in another platform.” - Emily Centeio
“You might have experienced something in your birth story that you thought didn't sit right with you, and you weren't really sure. And you maybe didn't feel confident enough to say something, but within the safe space, you're able to kind of bounce those experiences off each other.”- Corina Coleman
As champions of change, it is important to advocate for greater investment in programs like Epiphany.
“Yes, our kids are phenomenal. They're ready for school. They're going to do great - but we want to do more than that. And in doing that, for them, they need to have healthy support, like supporters and healthy cheerleaders. And that's their mothers, that's their fathers - that's us; their educators.” - Emily Centeio
To ensure the continued success and expansion of initiatives aimed at holistic child development, it is important to invest time, energy, and money into programs looking to do the work like the Epiphany Early Learning Center.
“It's really important that people understand what's needed funding wise, to run an organization like this and to run it thoughtfully and to run it well. There definitely needs to be a financial backing to that.” - Corina Coleman
By prioritizing such investments, we can lay the groundwork for future generations by transforming lives and shaping the future one child at a time.
As part of Vital CxN’s maternal health equity project, we recently partnered with the Early Learning Center to bring Epiphany School families together to lift up information, awareness, and community perspectives on non-dominant maternal health services. This partnership underscored their commitment to maternal health equity, and advanced their mission to empower families and shape future generations through dedicated educational initiatives. To learn more about the Epiphany Early Learning Center, click here.
Published: July 2024,
written by Adede Appah-Sampong, Health Equity Scholar
