Buen Dia Family School is a Preschool in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. Buen Dia is special wherein it focuses on the individual creativity and merit of art in early childhood development. (You can read more about their mission here) I am a Teacher’s Assistant and help with day to day duties ranging from story time to nap time. During the day I essentially make sure that each student is enjoying their time as much as possible and learning lessons about life, friendship, and even a bit of history due to the dates of my co-op coinciding with Black History Month. I really do hope that these young kids can remember the silly intern teacher that stayed with them for a few months!
The children at Buen Dia are English speakers or bilingual in 
both Spanish and English in differing amounts. This gives me a chance to practice my Spanish with them and with my fellow coworkers who are native speakers and bilingual themselves!
The most amazing aspect of Buen Dia to me is the concept of the “Family” School. Parents and relatives are welcome to join in on field trips to the park or Capoeira movement classes. Many of them work within the Mission district or very close by. A few parents put their outside skills to work for the school and come to help repair parts of Buen Dia, build new structures for the kids to play on, or even bring in delicious food from the restaurants they work in for us all to chow on every now and again. Speaking of food, Buen Dia is a vegetarian establishment. Anything prepared in our kitchen and given to children is vegetarian and always healthy. (You can still bring in meat or snack foods, but we don’t let them see us eating anything too bad for your health!) 
An organic food grocer even has ties to the school and if you give them the code “I am a friend of Buen Dia” some of the proceeds from the sale get donated to the school!
It really feels like a community despite the student’s very young age and I am personally honored to be a part of it. San Francisco itself and the whole Bay Area is simply amazing and I encourage anyone who has not been out here to at least come for a weekend or two. This is my favorite co-op out of the two I have done and it has steered me a little more into the direction of behavioral and/or developmental psychology.
