1st day of class ends summer vacation
Teachers and students reunited Tuesday, as the Butler School District started the 2018-19 school year.
At Emily Brittain Elementary School, the children arriving put an end to the last several weeks worth of planning. Principal Chad Broman said he'd been watching teachers fall back into their routines all day.
“For the teachers, the kids are their passion,” Broman said. “The other pieces will all fall into place, but the kids are the piece we needed now.”
Emily Brittain, like the district's other elementary schools, had its first day of all-day kindergarten classes Tuesday. Broman said in the afternoon that things were going well.
Deborah Braden, a kindergarten teacher of 26 years at Emily Brittain, agreed. Braden is a longtime advocate for the extended class cycle, and said she wants to postpone retirement just to participate in the new system longer.
At about 1:45 p.m., Braden said some of her students had been asking for rest time. Kindergarten is running from 9:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cramming everything into half that time, Braden said, didn't allow as many personal interactions between her and the students and between the students and each other.
“It's been wonderful having some quality time with the students,” Braden said.
When nap time finally came, Braden lowered the lights, turned on a rock salt lamp and started some soothing music.
Two things, besides kindergartners, were all over Braden's classroom: letters and technology.
The letters are omnipresent. They're printed on posters all over the walls. Sheets with alphabets are laminated to the students' desks. Letters are even printed on a large rug where students gather.
The district adopted specific literacy policies this year. All students are to be reading by third grade, and they hope to have as many started reading by the end of kindergarten as possible. Classrooms like Braden's are the starting point for that battle, according to Broman.Some of the technology is standard in classrooms, such as a smartboard where students both draw freely and respond to teacher direction. Braden has one personal piece of tech she won't give up: a microphone on a headset rigged to spread her voice evenly through four speakers throughout the room. If a student is misbehaving across the classroom, she can say so through a nearby speaker without raising her voice.But there wasn't much rule-breaking on the first day of class, Braden said.“Day one is for the children to get to know each other,” Braden said. “It's to build camaraderie and to start to build classroom routines.”Meanwhile, similar community-building was happening in older students' classrooms.In Chelsie Tonini's fourth grade classroom, Tonini directed students to write a top 10 lists of facts about themselves to share with her. Gone were all the alphabets, but this room had a class Instagram account name posted on the wall.Taylor Driskell, 9, said she was still feeling a little apprehensive about the challenges of fourth grade.“It's exciting, but once we get to the learning part it's going to go a little downhill,” Taylor said.Taylor was in Tonini's mathematics class. The student had a good review of Tonini — “she's really nice” — and Tonini had similar words for her class.“I've had a great group today,” Tonini said. “I missed seeing all my colleagues and students over the summer.”Asked to choose between school and summer break, 9-year-old Alex Hoy admitted he prefers summer. Still, he said the elementary school is “a great place.”
