Rewarding Yet Exhausting

In the HeadStart Winterim, thirty three Lawrence Academy Students have been helping out at various schools in Lawrence, MA and Lowell, MA. Mr. Woo, on of the faculty leaders of the HeadStart Winterim, has been leading eight students who act as teachers in eight different classrooms in Lawrence, MA. The schools we can find LA students helping out are the Common Street School, the Boys and Girls Club, Casa Roja, the Park Street School and another school in Methuen. Mr. Gagnon, Mr. Bates and Mr. Mitchell are leading twenty five students who are each acting as teachers in various classrooms in Lowell.

During their days helping as teachers, students work alongside two to four professional teachers and help to lead anywhere from eight to twenty children, ranging from ages three to five. While acting as a teacher, students helped manage the children during breakfast and lunch, manage play stations, help with reading and crafts, hold lessons on numbers and colors, help with recess activities, and modeling to the children how to be kind, sharing and respectful. Over the past week and a half of helping out in the classrooms, many Lawrence Academy students have formed friendly attachments to the students they are teaching. Students also expressed their new-found appreciation for teachers, especially those teaching preschool and elementary students.

LA Students Go To Preschool

For the past week, students in the HeadStart Winterim have been helping out as classroom teachers for three to four year-olds through the National HeadStart Organization. Each day, the large group of students, along with the four Winterim leaders (Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Bates, Mr. Gagnon, and Mr. Woo) head out to nursery classroom located in schools in Lowell, MA and Lawrence, MA. While in the classrooms, each student operates as a solo teacher, with the help of a professional and an aide, to lead and teach a group of around twenty children both in the classroom and on the playground.

Each day, after helping in the classrooms, the HeadStart group meets for a discussion of what they saw during their day of assisting teachers in the classrooms and how that affected them. The students also then keep a daily journal in which they reflect on their experiences that day.