By Lorenzo Salinas

l.v.salinas@panews.com

 

As Port Arthur schools head into Labor Day holiday, a certain elementary school is already well underway into the new school year after Harvey flooded its building last year.

Faculty and staff at Staff Sgt. Lucian Adams Elementary School are back in their building on Ninth Avenue. According to principal Cheryl Tripplett, faculty and staff are all excited to be back. And as the school year progresses, two teachers are continuing to bring their passions for teaching to the forefront of the class.

Jael Moody and Skylar Slaughter teach third-grade classes. While both implement different techniques, both have displayed a passion for their profession that has filtered down to their students.

“Mrs. Moody and Ms. Slaughter both go above and beyond when it comes to ensuring that their students are successful academically,” Tripplett said. “The key is developing relationships with students, and they both do that exceedingly well.”

 

Music is math

Moody teaches math and science. She’s taught at Adams since 2013 and has been teaching for nine years so far.

She’s a self-professed music person who has introduced rhythm and rhymes to help students learn the material easier.

“I write songs and do rhymes with the kids. It’s my thing because I’m a music person,” Moody said. “As a math teacher, most of the strategies I teach them come from rhymes I make for them.”

Moody’s musical leanings have also included a music video that she made with her students, one that soon encompassed the entire campus with a specially made song for the school.

“It’s kind of my thing — always being present and in close proximity to the kids,” she said. “I always make sure they’re moving.”

Moving is an integral part of Moody’s instruction for her classroom, ensuring students engage in kinesthetic learning.

 

Moving is learning

Moody said she engages students with physical gestures and breaks them into small groups that may learn and play games in successive rotations around the classroom.

“Sometimes if we’re learning about ordering numbers around, I’ll set each student in the group a number and ask them to order themselves around (according) to that number,” Moody said.

“They’ll be like ‘I’m lesser than this person’ or ‘I’m greater than this person’s number.’ Then they’ll physically move around from their chairs and find their place in the number line.”

Moody said technology also plays an important part of the learning process.

She employs online services like YouTube and educational hip-hop programs like Flocabulary to engage with students in creative ways.

“Everything is like a game so they don’t know they’re really learning a lesson,” Moody said.

She said she is going to try to write another song for the Adams campus this year.

“The other song is two years old,” Moody said. “I think it’s time to update it.”

“Mrs. Moody developed a math lesson that required the students to become entrepreneurs,” Tripplett said. “They created products and services that they then advertised and sold to their fellow classmates. Her students far exceeded her expectations with their creativity.”

 

Passion for teaching

Slaughter teaches ELAR, or English Language Arts and Reading. She has been teaching for four years, three with Adams and one starting out at Mauriceville Elementary.

“I always wanted to be a teacher,” Slaughter said. “Being able to make a difference in a child’s life… they’re so refreshing.”

Slaughter recalled her love for teaching, even as a child, and wanted to bring that passion into her classroom.

She incorporates progressive elements into her teaching routine, including a more benign disciplinary structure that focuses on cultivating relationships with students.

“It’s restorative discipline,” she said. “This is completely different from the stricter kind. It’s positive. In fact, we steer away from calling it ‘discipline.’”

Slaughter said this form of classroom structure restores relationships and builds a rapport with students.

As an example, Slaughter said she would start out the school year by asking students relatively shallow questions, thereby enabling her to build a level of trust and comfort with them.

As the school year progresses, the questions gradually go deeper and allow teacher and student to connect better with one another.

“Throughout the year, I’m able to build better relationships with the kids,” Slaughter said.

 

Smaller is better

In her day-to-day class, Slaughter uses Daily 5 stations in her classroom in order to create a sense of independence and to better engage students’ interests.

“It allows kids to work independently on their own… We build relationships with one another and they could read anywhere in the room they want to,” she said. “We do different things to keep their interest.”

In Daily 5 tasks, she breaks children up into groups that work on different activities like reading, listening and writing.

“It’s small groups; I like small groups,” Slaughter said. “It gives them differentiated instructions and hands-on learning.”

 

Positive goals

Slaughter said she is a big proponent of positive reinforcement for keeping her students both motivated and disciplined.

As PTA president, Slaughter said they are getting ready to put out a newsletter where it will feature outstanding students of the month, one for each grade level.

The honored student would have their picture and an article about them in the paper, as well as receive a gift card.

“Mrs. Slaughter recently conducted a reading lesson on author’s purpose,” Tripplett said. “The twist — the fun part — was writing for three different purposes.”

Tripplett said the students enjoyed writing three-form compositions on a brand of candy the students were well familiar with.

“Mrs. Moody and Ms. Slaughter’s passion for teaching is exceeded only by their creativity and knowledge,” Tripplett said. “These two young women are definitely assets to the Adams Elementary team.”