While the school year may have ended abruptly and early for the children last spring, and many children are waiting for the start of a new school year, for the teachers and staff the work never stopped. We’ve been puzzling out how to carry on with the business of learning in the face of a pandemic – what changes we need to make to the building, the grounds, and our classrooms, how to adapt to new and confusing health and safety requirements, not to mention all the general maintenance that happens in a normal summer, and most of all, how to get on with what we love most: teaching children!
This summer teachers and staff spent countless hours in zoom meetings and on task forces, planning, researching, attending webinars, pouring over reports and procedures, and designing protocols and schedules that were constantly changing and being updated.
August 1st, the office physically opened and Director, Amy Fitzgerald, reworked the office to accommodate the new Leadership Team including Interventionist Hillary Mosier, Program Coordinator Emma Melo, and new administrator Jill Ramsey.
Covid-19 precautions are not the only safety updates – the school installed a new sprinkler system this summer which required a lot of pipes, a lot of plaster dust, and the entire front sidewalk to be dug up.
Watching the work reminded us of some of our own school Mud Kitchen experiences from years past! We bet these hard workers would have enjoyed our Mud Kitchen.
We use the term “kitchen” loosely when referring to mud play. Like many modern households, everything happens in the kitchen. This year we may need to bring in some construction trucks, shovels, squeegees and rakes. And dinosaurs.
Once the new sidewalk was finished there was only one thing left to do: Program Coordinator and art teacher Emma Melo, who enjoys a good mess, was the perfect candidate to repaint the red and green carpool line!
The teachers, who had been busy at home learning new technology tools, planning for new protocols and possible remote learning, as well as taking care of their own families, began to drop by the school to pick up supplies and class lists, start sorting materials, prepare class rooms, and ask Jill LOTS of questions.
Meanwhile our amazing team of custodians, painters, handy-folk and helpers were waxing floors, cleaning carpets, patching and painting walls, cleaning air units, plugging leaks, and fixing broken tiles and tricky door handles.
Our materials and storage closets got overhauls as well. Since we had to empty closets for pipe installation and clean up a lot of dust, it seemed like an opportune time to inventory our stores of classroom materials, manipulatives, toys, learning tools and loose parts. We also needed to make sure the materials we offer to children this year support not just our school philosophy but are appropriate for COVID-19 health and safety regulations. All shared and re-useable materials must be able to be washed and sanitized daily and no soft toys are allowed. All soft dolls and stuffed toys got shelved for the year. Our school has tried to minimize our use of plastic toys over the years, but we feel doll and dramatic play is something we need to support for children. We went searching the school for any hard plastic dolls. Where were they? We had to ask the teachers and hunt deep in the closets for a Baby Doll Round-Up. We found them!
As a staff we’ve been studying anti-bias education so diversity and equity is on our minds. Some of our dolls are vintage or look like they’ve soaked too long in the sensory table. We also didn’t have enough to go around, so we ordered some more baby dolls and took the opportunity to make sure we had a more diverse representation and enough for each classroom to enjoy dolls for dramatic play.
In the midst of all this constructive chaos, teachers Blaine Hicks and Celia Kelly kicked off Kindergarten remotely. They are currently teaching from the Kindergarten classroom while the children join virtually from their homes. The teachers have invited the children to give feedback about what they think the classroom needs and get a chance to be a part of the setup of the environment. They all meet twice each morning for meetings, stories, project work and activities. The Kindergartener’s started the year off with the ultimate self-reflection exercise: self portraits. Celia and Blaine will download and print copies of the children’s creations and put them on the classroom wall so when they arrive in person later this month, they will already have their work reflected in the space.
Our beloved preschool music teacher Martha Makela joins the Kindergarten meetings on Thursdays and also provides videos so the children can revisit the learning as often as they want. There is just something magical about Martha Makela that makes us want to join in her songs and chants, even remotely on a video recording!
It has been six months since we have had children on our playground and as as a result nature had taken over! Our gardens and trees were overgrown and weedy. A few parent volunteers and teachers have come by to cut back shrubs and pull weeds. The upside to this long rest the playground had was that the grasses, herbs and flowers have become tall and well-established. We were even able to divide the grasses and plants. Some of the “hidey-holes” are nice and fort-like, and the fairy hut in the art garden has passion flowers blooming on it. There will be a lot to investigate and discover when the children come back to school and can spend many happy hours investigating the gardens, the rotting stumps, and the critters.
We are ready to go and hope to see everyone in person soon!