September 8, 2005

Angie Warner teaches kindergarten at Mills Lawn School

By Lauren Heaton

Kindergarten teacher Angie Warner
Angie Warner is tall, and when she stands over her students, there is a lot of space between her and her 16 kindergarten students. But Warner has no trouble connecting with the youngest of Mills Lawn’s students, and she knows how to think fast to keep feeding the fast-moving minds and feet of her students.

Warner spent half of last year at Mills Lawn as a student teacher, working with longtime kindergarten teacher Becky Brunsman, while she was getting her teaching certificate at Antioch McGregor. The experience helped her get to know how kindergartners operate.

“They’re consumers, they’re busy bodies, they like to produce things,” she said. “They like to make artwork, they’re exploring the world, asking questions. It’s so neat to see.”

For many of the children in Warner’s class, kindergarten is their first experience at school, and she has a vested interest in seeing that it’s a good one.

“You don’t want anybody to say that they don’t like kindergarten. You don’t want anyone to say they just can’t do kindergarten,” she said.

At Mills Lawn, Warner said, everyone from the parents to the teachers, staff and administration as well as community members seems to be interested in making sure students get what they need and have fun doing it. “There’s so much involvement. It seems like everyone is invested in the kids,” she said. “This school system wants to make everyone feel successful.”

Warner, who is married and lives in Beavercreek, teaches one of two morning kindergartens. She follows Brunsman’s schedule of circle time sharing, work and reading, play, snack, reading and recess while planning hands-on activities geared for 15-minute attention spans.

Warner started out in communications, graduating with a bachelor’s from the University of Cincinnati in 2001. But when she looked back at the things she really liked to do, volunteering with Ohio Reads and at women’s shelters, teaching safety courses to young students and babysitting, they all involved being with children.

She likes the energy and openness of young children, she said. “There’s a lot that goes into being a teacher,” she said.

Kristin Adkins is third grade teacher at Mills Lawn School.

3rd-grade teacher Kristin Adkins
Kristin Adkins, the new third-grade teacher at Mills Lawn school, has a bag of tricks, such as giving tickets for terrific students, calling for secret walkers, and invoking visits from the desk fairy, all of which she plans to use to motivate children to succeed.

“It manages your classroom, it gets them excited and keeps them on task,” said Adkins, who is filling in this year for Marcia Williamson, who is on medical leave. “Everybody wants to earn and please, and kids are really interested in how these [games] work.”

Students earn tickets for good work and good behavior, with which they can buy school supplies and educational games from a store Adkins sets up in her classroom. The kids use math to operate the store and buy things that encourage them to keep learning, she said.

Adkins, who is 24, graduated from Wright State last November with a bachelor’s in early childhood education. This is her first teaching job.

“I’ve always known that I wanted to be a teacher,” she said. “I do this because I love it. This is my passion, and I could not see myself doing anything else.”

Adkins grew up in Xenia, the child of a middle school principal and a home economics teacher. She chose to focus on elementary grades because her fondest memories of school are from her early childhood.

Along with her fun and play, Adkins said she assesses the needs of her 17 students and sometimes she stays at school until 9 p.m. looking at their folders from last year and getting to know each of them. Her room has several groupings of four to five desks arranged facing each other so that students can learn from each other. Together they discuss their math and reading problems while Adkins walks from group to group to answer questions and guide students, she said.

Adkins likes her small class size because it enables her to give students individual attention.

She plans to begin studying for a master’s degree at either WSU or Antioch University McGregor in the spring and perhaps focus on training as an intervention specialist. She also hopes one day to earn a principal’s licensure and become the principal of an elementary school, she said. She said she is fortunate that her first job is with the Yellow Springs schools, where she hopes to stay.

“It’s an overwhelming feeling because I’ve wanted this for so long,” she said. “It feels like home here.”