Mrs. Ashley

 

I hired Mrs. Ashley as one of my two year old teachers about a month after I had been there.  I was in a crunch for a new teacher and actually hired her over the phone taking a huge leap of faith in her abilities to manage two year olds.  Well, as an employer I feel like I've struck gold, and as a parent I want her to be with Korbyn FOREVER!  She's wonderful.  She's reliable, loyal, honest, hard-working, and best of all patient.

When I hired her I explained that I wanted structure in this classroom that had never seen such a thing.  The teacher that was in there before was patient, but she pretty much let the kids take the reigns all day.  In the first couple of days that she was in the classroom, I knew she was going to do great.  She used positive reinforcement instead of always getting onto the kids for doing the wrong things and they responded SO well to that as I knew they would.  Kids that age loved being praised for when they do something right (reinforcing that behavior) and she immediately set the tone that she was the teacher. 

I also knew that she was pregnant when I hired her and knew that this day would have to come eventually.  Her baby is due at the end of February and I have to give kudos to her for having seven two year olds all day and being eight months pregnant, but she handled it like a champ.  Last week she started going part time and now this week I've completely taken her out of her classroom and made her a floater.  I put a new teacher, Miss Raquel, in her place while she's out.  Miss Raquel is amazingly wonderful as well, thankfully.  But she's no Mrs. Ashley and the kids are testing the waters big time to see what they can and can't get away with.

The kids absolutely adore Mrs. Ashley and kids that used to cry when being dropped off now cry that they don't want to go home...I LOVE those kinds of tears!

She's also really good at fostering each child's uniqueness, and Korbyn is pretty unique.  I walked in one evening to check on everything before closing and noticed new artwork on the wall.  If you look closely the paper says "This is a picture of my pet."  On everyone else's picture is a magazine cut out of a dog, on Korbyn's there is a picture of a lion!  I laughed when I saw it and had to take a picture.  I asked Ashley the next day what the story was on the lion and she started to laugh.  She said she had cut out pictures of different animals the night before and laid them out on the table for the kids to choose from.  She said immediately when Korbyn saw the pictures she yelled "LION!" and said that was her pet.  Apparently we have a pet lion.