Hardest Week...

Last Wednesday I went to school anticipating a great day with my class but was blindsided with the worst news. A early morning house fire took the life of a sweet young Kindergartner at our school, Hayden Martin. He was in the classroom next to ours and I have had the pleasure of getting to know him. The one thing that I love about Shaw is that all three Kindergarten classes collaborate together all week long with many activities, allowing us to get to know all 55 Kindergarten students at our school. Hayden was a bright young boy who loved every part of school. The story has been all over the news, ADN.com and the frontiersman but the house fire is still under investigation. I hope that the truth of it all will come to rest and people realize the true loss of this 6 year old boy.
I am starting to come to peace with it all, but have many emotions of anger, sadness, and happiness knowing that he is in a better place. Our school is dealing with it very well and only making us a stronger community. Hayden is now an angel watching over all of us with his big smile and a twinkle in his eye. I am so happy and at peace knowing that school is the one thing that brought him happiness everyday and that is because of his AMAZING teacher and school.
R.I.P Hayden



On a brighter note....we had a Math-a-thon Assembly where the entire school came together to celebrate our highest earning year ever. Instead of selling wrapping paper, candy, and gits our school does a Math-a-thon where children ask for pledges to improve their math learning and better themselves. The money earned from each student and class will go half to their class and half to their school to cover costs of field trips, assembly performers, game nights, pizza parties...the list gos on. Our school as a whole collected almost $11,000!!! Our class was the top Kindergarten classroom collecting $425 in pledges!!! The children that collected $30 or more were put in a raffle where over 150 prizes were bought to give to the highest earners and all other students. The BIG surprise for the assembly was that we rented SUMO costumes and our staff had some friendly competitions. The kids LOVED cheering on teachers and watching them fall, run each other over and having difficult getting up. It was a really nice way to end our hard week.