Teachers prep for school

STAFF WRITER

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link Staff photo: Jackie Johnson

Fourth grade teacher Ashley Ray trims laminated papers in her classroom on Wednesday morning. Local teachers have been preparing for a new school year by buying supplies and prepping their classrooms.

School is almost back in session, which means local teachers are preparing for a new year.

Kelli Ramirez, a first-grade teacher at James Elementary School, said the teachers come in early to get their classrooms ready, because much of their time in the upcoming week will be spent in meetings.

Christina Maestas, who also teaches first grade at James, said it takes two weeks for her to prepare.

“I try to give myself the full two months off for summer, and then I come in the first part of August,” she said. “I get the classroom ready and make sure it looks inviting for the children, and then there is all of the paperwork and the fun stuff like name tags.”

Lillie Garcia is transitioning from teaching third grade to first grade, so this year, she came in to prepare right after the last school year ended.

“I moved classrooms, so I’ve been working all summer to get prepared,” Garcia said. “I’ve been getting everything organized and sorted so that when the students come in, they have their structure.”

Ashley Ray, a fourth grade teacher at Valencia Elementary School, starts to mentally prepare over the summer.

“I begin thinking about how I want to change things up for the next year, and what went well, or what didn’t, from the year before,” she said.

According to Ray, there are also teachers that spend a lot of time preparing at home as well as in the classroom.

“We read a lot of blogs and different teacher websites,” she said. “We spend time on Pinterest looking at things like how other teachers decorate their rooms and different ideas and strategies on what works well, which can be everything from how to get students to put their names on their papers or how to handle discipline situations.”

Ray said the teachers communicate throughout the summer to help each other.

“We’re always getting ideas and feeding off of each other on how to get things to run as smoothly as possible, so we can focus more on the curriculum,” she said.

Garcia agreed that staying in contact and sharing ideas with other teachers is an essential part of the process.

“I think building community and relationships with your co-workers is very important, because you work with them all year, and they’re your backbone,” she said. “You have to try and pull together as a team to get through.”

Along with building relationships and organizing classrooms, the teachers are also prepping for the open house on Aug. 13.

The first day of school will be Aug. 14.

“We should have a lot more people in attendance this time, because parents were not notified who their children’s teachers were, so they will be coming to find that out at open house,” Maestas said. “We’re getting paperwork ready for the parents to look over while we visit with the children and get them familiar with us and the classroom.”

The fourth-grade teachers are using the unknown assignment of teachers as a way to get the children excited by sending out mystery letters, according to Ray.

“In the letter, we welcome the children back and tell them how excited we are to see them, but we just sign it as ‘your fourth grade teacher,’” she said. “So it encourages them to come to open house.”

Ramirez said open house is unique for kindergarten through second grade, because it allows parents to sign their children up for assessment dates.

“For us, the open house is a meet and greet, and then we have three days where we test the children individually and get to know them more,” she said. “As a grade level, we all do the same testing so that we have the same data going in, and then when they come in as a group, we are ready to start.”

Through all of the preparation and busy schedules, it is also an exciting time for the teachers, said Maestas.

“We haven’t met these kids yet, so we don’t know what they’re going to bring to our learning, and even though we are here to teach them, they teach us as well,” she said. “Right now, we just have a list of names, so when they come in and match that face to the name, that is where you create the classroom culture.”