I was stunned to read this. It's the Garden School revisited in a town next to where my daughter in law was reared. It didn't cost 22 million dollars to begin the Garden School. It only cost $160.00. But they didn't have Judy and Edith, and in there lies the difference. Read about what they do. They should have called us. Could have saved the state a lot of money.
Collaboration Key At Almost-complete Friendship SchoolTeachers Prepare Curricula as Ribbon-Cutting.
By PATRICIA DADDONADay Staff Writer, WaterfordPublished on 8/20/2005
Waterford — Ten kindergarten and 20 preschool teachers are preparing for a learning experience as new to them as it will be to their students.
The mix of veteran and new early-childhood teachers and instructional aides will spend next week boning up on math, literacy and science curricula, learning to use new laptop computers and organizing classrooms at the Friendship School, which has its ribbon-cutting Wednesday.
The $22 million public magnet school on Rope Ferry Road will welcome 466 preschoolers and kindergarten students from New London and Waterford on Aug. 31. The school is designed for very young urban, suburban and special needs students.
Interim director Kathy Suprin said team-building, goal-setting and “putting heads together” will be the focus not only next week, but in weeks to come.
In their new instructional environment, teachers will work with up to 18 students in interconnected classrooms arranged in “pods,” or clusters of three — two preschool classes and one kindergarten group. From offices behind the classrooms, teachers will chart student progress in portfolios and reports to parents.
The design fosters “co-teaching” in which one of the teachers in a cluster has expertise in special needs, while the other two teachers and three or more instructional aides have backgrounds in special and regular education. Together, they share the duty of teaching the entire class, said Doreen Marvin, director of development at LEARN, the regional educational agency that spearheaded the project.
“So often, in a school, the kindergarten teacher is the only kindergarten teacher,” Suprin said in an interview Wednesday. “We'll have 10 kindergarten teachers in the same building. That will be a first.”
Other firsts for the region include three consecutive years of early childhood education in one setting and a faculty with more than two-thirds of teachers qualified to teach special needs students, said Marvin.
The Friendship School faculty includes two preschool teachers and a speech pathologist from the Waterford school district and four kindergarten teachers and one preschool instructor from New London. Some veteran teachers developed the new curriculum and participated in the hiring of the instructional aides, said Suprin and Marvin.
“We have a great blend of people to teach (students) that they're not very different from each other,” added Suprin. “We're making differences invisible. And that's the time to start, with three-year-olds.”
To be hired by LEARN, teachers had to be state-certified and familiar with the state Department of Education's “frameworks for early childhood education,” which encourage development of a career ladder in the profession, recognition of accomplishments, and interaction with the communities they serve, according to the DOE Web site.
In addition to meeting state standards, the school plans to seek accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Skills the teachers are expected to have and to foster in one another include devising “developmentally appropriate activities” for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds in science, literacy and math, and principles that cross all subjects, like discovery, Suprin said.
An example would be to get a child to compare the size of building blocks, then build a wall the child could climb over without knocking it down, Suprin said.
Teachers also have to be able to work closely with families, said Marvin, since the parent is the child's first educator. Parents can visit in adjoining observation rooms, where they can see how their child acts when he or she thinks parents are not around. They're also welcome in the classroom.
“They have an open invitation to be there any time,” Suprin said.
No comments:
Post a Comment