HISTORY

In 1929, Mrs. Willie Lee McAdams, the wife of a Presbyterian minister in St. Petersburg, realized that many children around her needed special care.  Mrs. McAdams responded and set the stage for an exceptional environment, off the streets.  That center was a place where children would learn to be peacemakers, where they would be loved, and where they would learn to appreciate the diversity of the world community.

Soon the school's reputation and recognition grew, and assistance for the center came in from many sources, primarily from the religious community.

In 1943, an independent governing body, the Children's Interracial Organization, was incorporated. Its growth was modest, but the school remained stable.

In December 1974, the school became sponsored by the Friends of Happy Workers, a not-for-profit, volunteer corporation.

Today Happy Workers Children's Center has over 170 students.  Mrs. McAdams' vision is ours to this day. And those founding principles continue:  caring development in an environment of love, trust and respect.

PHILOSOPHY

Happy Workers embraces the Reggio Philosophy, which recognizes the child as powerful and competent; possessing a multitude of creative languages. Parents, teachers, and children are partners in a learning community which supports children's development in aesthetically beautiful indoor and outdoor environments.

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

Children have the right to be recognized as subjects of individual, legal, civil, and social rights; as both source and constructors of their own experience and thus active participants in the organization of their identities, abilities, and autonomy, through relationships, and interaction with their peers, with adults, with ideas, with objects, and with the real and imaginary events of intercommunicating worlds. All this, while establishing the fundamental premise for creating better “citizens of the world” and improving the quality of human interaction, also credits children, and each individual child, with and extraordinary wealth of inborn abilities and potential, strength and creativity. Irreversible suffering and impoverishment of the child is caused when this fact is not acknowledged.

Starting from this point of reference, we recognize the right of children to realize and expand their potential , placing great values of their ability to socialize, receiving their affection, trust, and satisfying their needs and desires to learn. And this is so much truer when children are reassured by and effective alliance between the adults in their lives, adults who are always ready to help, who place higher value on the search for constructive strategies of thought and action than on the direct transmission of knowledge and skills.

These constructive strategies contribute to the formation of creative intelligence, free thought, and individuality that is sensitive and aware, though an ongoing process of differentiation and integration with other people and experiences.

The fact that the rights of children are recognized as the rights of all children is the sign of a more accomplished humanity.