An apple a day keeps kindergartners engaged

For 20 years, BP has been recognizing Alaska’s exceptional teachers—like Marleen Moffitt—with the BP Teachers of Excellence program. Since 1995, they’ve recognized 650 teachers. Click here to nominate another deserving teacher. New this year, you can also nominate a principal, school nurse, teaching assistant or other school staff member for the Educational Allies Award, recognizing the unsung heroes in our schools.

When you imagine a kindergarten classroom, you may picture something akin to a piñata moments after impact. A flurry of ripped paper, loose crayons and toys with wild-eyed children tearing about, reveling in the chaos.

That’s not the case in Marleen Moffitt’s classroom.

Equipped with 29 years of experience teaching kindergarten, plus four years teaching high school special education for the Cordova School District, Moffitt harnesses the boundless energy and curiosity of her 23 5-year-olds to form the bedrock of their education experience.

In 2015, Moffitt was named a BP Teacher of Excellence, chosen from 1,200 nominations across Alaska.

“She has a very dynamic personality that’s very effective,” said principal Gayle Groff. “And she’s exceptional at building a foundation for learning that the rest of our staff is able to build off of as the students go on.”

Moffitt encourages students to discover the answers to their own questions.

“My quote is ‘solve your own problem,'” Moffitt said. “A student might say, ‘I don’t have a red crayon.’ OK, can you solve your own problem? Get up out of your chair and go find a red crayon.”

Moffitt is challenging her pupils to do their best and try new things without being afraid of making mistakes. This ethos permeates her lesson plans as well. Rather than rigidly planning the school day down to the minute, Moffitt allows the students to chart their course. Through her years as an educator, Moffitt said, she has realized that curiosity is a person’s first teacher. In practice, that means sometimes she’ll plan to launch into a lesson on reading, but something crops up that directs her little learners to science, so she’ll reward that natural curiosity and shift the lesson to science.

Tapping into that interest and connecting with students is what Moffitt excels at.

When Kara Clegg enrolled her son Caden in Moffitt’s class after they’d relocated from Ohio, she was worried about how he would be integrated as a new student, especially one with delayed speech.

“I felt like the stars aligned that we had her as a teacher,” Clegg said. “Not only can she relate to all the kids in the classroom, kids with wildly different personalities, but she can focus on what each individual kid may need. Whatever it is, she just knows.”

She also knows that her students need her to leave plenty of time for productive play in her kindergarten class.

“She guards playtime with a fierceness,” said Groff. “A lot of social growth happens during that time, and she’s adamant that we don’t take away playtime for academic push, because there is a lot of learning acquired through play.”

For years, Moffitt has focused her lessons around a single concept or object.

“You take one thought, like bears, apples or Thanksgiving, and you incorporate all your activities around that theme,” Moffitt said.

For her apple unit, Moffitt read books about apples. She sang songs about apples. She taught her students graphing math using the different colored apples they’d brought in, estimating the circumference of the apples, and measuring the weight of the apples in comparison to larger objects. She made applesauce. She talked about how apples related to science and social studies. And she took her students on a field trip to an orchard (via YouTube, since there aren’t any in Cordova).

This year, the newly adopted Common Core-based reading curriculum challenged her to adapt her lessons. Moffitt stayed abreast of the changes, pulling in as much as she could from prior units with the goal of getting her students out of their chairs.

It wasn’t the first time Moffitt had to embrace a new teaching style. When she first started teaching special education at the high school 32 years ago, she used chalk and an electric typewriter. Now she’s mentoring other teachers — some of them decades younger — in using interactive whiteboards known as SmartBoard technology.

She’s proud of her technology accomplishments and has numerous other proud teacher moments on a daily basis — like when a student who has been struggling all year finally reads her first word or when she can see the information connecting for that “Aha!” moment.

Clegg said Moffitt actively tries to build a bond with the parents of students.

Some of her proudest teaching moments are actually with parents. “Being able to help a parent who may have been struggling at home with something or just helping give them suggestions for ways they can change their routine and structure at home to become a better parent and achieve peace at home is really rewarding,” Moffitt said.

“She greets every adult with a personalized message, both at drop off and pick up,” Clegg said. “She always makes everyone feel welcome in her kindergarten home.”

For Moffitt, it’s all part of being teacher.

“Teaching, I believe, is a calling,” Moffitt said. “If you’re called to be a teacher, you know you’re meant to be a teacher. I was meant to teach. It’s one of the most stressful, strenuous jobs you could ever have, but also one of the most rewarding. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

This story is sponsored by BP, super fan of innovative teachers across Alaska.

This article was produced by the special content department of Alaska Dispatch News in collaboration with BP. The ADN newsroom was not involved in its production.