Wayne Preno - Combining a Busy Job With Family Life

The work that Wayne Preno does at his Early and Bright Childcare Centers is important to starting underprivileged children off on the right foot and helping to improve the community. When he is not at work, Preno has his family at home and he enjoys spending time with them.

Preno has three children; two boys and a girl. The eldest is Cole, who is fourteen, then there’s Drew, who is eight, and Lana, who is five years old. All three children are active in sport and a lot of his weekends involve coaching his children’s teams. Currently, he is coaching his middle son, Drew’s basketball team. Preno loves coaching his children’s team because it allows him to be involved and cheer for his kids at the same time. Being a former collegiate basketball player, coaching basketball is the closest that he can get to the game. When he is not at a sporting event, Preno likes to go hiking with his children. All three kids enjoy the outdoors and taking in the fresh air.

All three of his children like to visit their father at his Early and Bright Childcare Centers. They like spending time with the children and help out when they can. For Preno, he enjoys watching his children help out and it confirms his theory that people want to give back to the community. All three of his children are preschool graduates but were enrolled at another institution. Wayne Preno hopes that they will follow in his footsteps, achieve their own successes, and continue to give back to the community.
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Coach Wayne Preno on How Sports Can Contribute to The Lives of Youngsters

After having a successful collegiate basketball career, Wayne Preno has become a coach to stay in the game. Preno finds the time to get away from his day job as the founder and owner of the Early and Bright Childcare Centers in the Philadelphia region. Currently, Preno is the coach of the Bustleton Bengals basketball team as well. Before that, he had previous experience as a football, baseball, and soccer coach. However, basketball is his first love.

Preno is a firm believer of re-investing one’s time to help to improve the community. That was why he started his childcare centers. However, when talking about coaching, Preno thinks that sports offer a lot to children as well. They are a great way to stay active. More importantly, they help children learn the concept of a team and how to work together to achieve something. Athletics can offer this team-building experience where most schools fall short. Sport can also create discipline and provide a strong authority figure. Where Preno is from, he knows that there are a lot of broken families with not many father figures playing prominent roles in their children’s lives.

Preno has demonstrated that he can do well as an authority figure. He says that he wants to coach for a long time because of the joy that he receives when he watches these children succeed. For Wayne Preno, coaching children give him the opportunity to teach the children about values and responsibility while doing something fun and keeping them physically active.
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Wayne Preno - From Lifeguard to Running a Business

During the summer when he was in high school, Wayne Preno spent his time on Long Beach Island, New Jersey patrolling the beach and ocean while saving lives as a lifeguard. Now he is using some of those same lessons while he runs his two Early and Bright Childcare Centers in the Philadelphia region.

Lifeguarding is not about catching a tan and chatting up girls in bikinis. For Preno, he took great pride in his dedication to his job. Lifeguarding is a difficult job mentally. Someone has to be focused on the swimmers for over eight hours a day. Many people do not have that type of concentration, especially when being distracted by people on the beach. Lifeguards also need to have the anticipation and planning to know when a swimmer is looking tired and intervene before it is too late. The last attribute a lifeguard needs is the stamina and swim skills to rescue a drowning person. Preno had all three of these traits and prevented a lot of drownings during his time as a lifeguard.

Running a business is similar to lifeguarding. A lot of concentration needs to occur on the business and how to make it succeed. Businessmen also need the anticipation to act before there is a problem within the company. Wayne Preno has been able to use these same lifeguarding principals to improve his childcare centers. He already has two centers in the Philadelphia area and is looking to expand shortly. Wayne Preno was able to take the skills that made him an effective lifeguard and translate them into business success.

Wayne Preno About His Early and Bright Childcare Centers

Wayne Preno is the founder and owner of two Early and Bright Childcare Centers in the Philadelphia region. He wants to serve the underprivileged children of his communities and give them a leg up on their education.

Studies have shown that children who participate in early childhood education are more likely to enroll in college and have greater success later on in life. This is especially true with minority children. Preno sees this early childhood education as being one of the best investments a parent can make in their child’s education because it will set up the next twelve years of school. This is the first opportunity for children to spend time away from the nuclear family unit and interact with a completely different environment. His childcare centers expose children to math, reading, and social skills that are needed in the classroom setting. His curriculum is optimized to enrich his student’s environment in a fun and entertaining setting. The parents of Preno’s students are happy with their children's development and see improvement at home.

Preno wants to be seen as a role model for the community. He believes that his work with his early childcare centers will inspire other people to help improve their community. Preno wholeheartedly believes in the saying “it takes a village to raise a child.” As he continues to help young children in Philadelphia prepare themselves for school, Preno will continue to be integral to the community. In the long run, Wayne Preno wants his kids to come back to the community and inspire a new generation of children.