By Kaia Cohen &

Makayla Sprague

Staff Writers

      Walking into the kindergarten wing of Salisbury Elementary School, the scent of Play-Doh and children’s dirty sneakers kisses the hallway leading to Ms. Anna Pender’s classroom, where 18 students are beginning their first year on the long path of their educations.

Peeking into the classroom, a large cedar wood door holds back 18 mini-humans from the real world who are just starting to embark on their journeys. The large, metal doorknob slowly turns and the door opens to where Pender and her students sit criss-cross in a circle, 18 little faces looking up in utter curiosity.

Our first glimpse at Pender and her class teleported these two reporters back to their days in kindergarten, and the great times in those days. The gentle words of Pender snapped us back into reality.

“Class, Class!” said Pender gently.

“Yes, Yes?” Replied the 18 little voices of her focused students.

Graduating from Endicott College in 2015, Pender has just begun her very first year teaching kindergarten in the Triton district. Since her own kindergarten year, Pender stated that she has always dreamed of being a teacher, especially for kindergarten as she stated she loves the fun of it.

So how is the school year going so far? The first few weeks were just a time for her to adjust to the kids, said Pender, to develop a rapport with her students, and get down some ground rules.

“Throw away September,” replied  Pender when asked about her school year thus far. She says she knew the start of the school year would be far from easy, and that the chaos of new student jitters would die out eventually.

Pender developed a method to grasp her class’s attention after a few days by shouting, “Class, Class!” she says made her students reply, “Yes, Yes?” This made her students focus and pay attention to their teacher’s next orders. Using rhymes and songs, she says has made her students pay attention while having fun.

When interviewing one of Pender’s students, she spoke of her new teacher highly and stated multiple times how much she enjoyed school, the environment of her learning, and, best of all, she was happy to come to school every morning. At such a young age, it appeared that this particular student had a good outlook on her school year, and she felt satisfied with Pender’s teaching style and activities.

While interviewing this student, it was hard to ignore the white noise in the background. Pender was teaching her students math, particularly how to draw See KINDERGARTEN on pg. 2 KINDERGARTEN from page 1

number two. All you have to do is draw a candy cane with a shoe on the bottom, she said.

Pender told the kids to practice writing the two in the sky first, which meant taking their fingers and imitating the shape of a two in the air. Then, the kids were told to write it on their paper.

When one of Pender’s students was asked how she liked her teacher she replied with “Good.” and continued talking about what was running through her kindergarten mind.

The white walls of the classroom are decorated with colored construction paper, and bulletin boards here are filled with Dr. Suess quotes. A pink fluffy rug takes the place of the reading area. A blue and white chevron teepee tent allows students to enter their own world during independent reading time.

The circle in which the children sit is formed of colored dots where each child is assigned a color to sit on. Closing the circle is Pender’s light blue rocking chair with a pillow sitting on the seat. On the pillow reads the alphabet in all the colors of the rainbow.

Not only is Pender new to her classroom this year, but so too is Ms. Laura Sampson. Sampson is an aid for a student in Pender’s class and together they work to make each day go by smoothly.

“I think she’s doing awesome since it’s her first year, and I like the songs that she uses and the kids really like the songs,” said Sampson while addressing Pender’s teaching style.“We did a clean up song and she uses songs for the weather, which is good because they sing and use hand movements.”

Pender is getting good reviews from her students and Sampson, yet this school year so far has been an adventure for her. She is still trying her best to make her 18 little friends used to the school environment and getting them into the swing of the school year.