Greetings First Place Families,
I hope all is well, during this uncertain time. I want to thank everyone for your support, patience, flexibility, and understanding during this time of distance learning. This school year we embarked on a new journey--Virtual School. Zoom, has become a household name, and the world of video conferencing has been leveraged heavily for our educators to connect with their classes and deliver content to students. This has brought on its own set of challenges for teaching as everyone learns how to operate within this video conferencing world.
First Place educators have established a great learning partnership with all families and we appreciate the sacrifices you have made during this course of this school year. It brings me great joy observing the Zoom classes every morning, seeing your children develop learn and grow. Our teachers have adjusted from in-person classroom teaching to holding daily virtual learning classes, and I must say they are doing an awesome job! Ms. Stay is the lead teacher for classroom 3, read about her experience below, in her own words.
We look forward to continuing to work together providing distance learning for the duration of this school year.
Carol Brown
Early Learning Director
Ms. Stacy’s Experience (in her own words):
When the pandemic hit as a teacher of young children these thoughts plagued my mind. How can I continue to reach the children that I have in my class? How am I going to meet their social emotional needs? How can I teach them affectively through a computer screen? How am I going to keep the students and families engaged until this pandemic is over? Here’s the thing I love most about teaching and it’s that even in person you never know what each day will bring even when it’s planned out. I realized I just had to stretch my mind and my other teaching skills to meet the needs of my students and families. The thoughts that plagued me at the beginning of this pandemic I now use as fuel to ensure that each student is still taught based on their individual learning style, in order to meet or exceed their developmental skills levels. I must say that I am having a great time teaching even now. My students are writing their first names, numbers and letter. The students are engaging in the stories that are being read. We are now doing Art, Science and Cooking Projects all virtually. My class is ready and eager to learn daily what more could a teacher teaching virtually ask for?
“Our strength is greatest in the toughest times if we don’t give up.”
-Stacy Brown (Green)
