NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — March's Allen Samuels CDJR Teacher of the Month is Randa Nickel, she is a pre-school teacher at South Hutchinson Elementary School with USD 309.
"Teachers get into teaching because they love children," Nickel said. "I taught kindergarten for ten years, then I was a stay at home mom for seven. Now, I'm back in the classroom again. I've been in preschool now for five years. I absolutely adore my job."
She sees the thought of getting ABCs and 123s into little kids as happening even more often than it did before she came back to the classroom.
"The state has really pushed us in a direction of academics earlier with kids," Nickel said. "I don't know that that's necessarily developmentally appropriate. There are a lot of things that I felt like, when I first started teaching kindergarten, that they are expecting preschoolers to know now. Some of that is just introduction."
Like many teachers of Pre-K and lower elementary grades, Nickel has to keep the kids in motion to keep their attention.
"We do a lot of movement," Nickel said. "We switch activities very frequently. We start our morning off by a morning story. Then, as soon as we're done with our story, we stand up and we do three wiggle songs, is what we call them, to get our wiggles out for the day, so that we are ready to sit and listen and learn. We don't do a lot of sitting. We do a lot of moving and playing. We do a lot of play based learning, where they are playing with a purpose. They don't realize that they are learning something while they are playing, but they are."
Nickel's class received pizza from Pizza Hut and ice cream from Braum's as recognition of her award.
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