North Columbia Elementary School invites students back with open arms and warm smiles by starting the day with a campus pep rally to set standards for the new school year.
“We talked about boosting attendance and school wide expectations for the year like behavior in the hallway and lunchroom. We did that school wide in the morning, and that was so everyone got the same information and to set standards for the day,” said principal Tonya Gambrell.
Gambrell said her school is blessed to have teachers who have a genuine love and passion for teaching which always makes the start of school fun and easy.
She said many of the teachers encouraged their students to get to know one another through fun activities and conversation in the classroom. “The second graders did an activity where they had to find someone who liked grapefruit, things like that,” she said.
Students hugged teachers with excited smiles, learned the lunchroom procedures and enjoyed recess with peers.
“We have about 45 new students and all of them transitioned well,” said Gambrell. “We, as the staff, were very impressed.”
She also said students all seemed happy to start class once again and many exclaimed their excitement to see their friends.
MORE: Lack of 24-hour emergency veterinarian care concerns residents
Gambrell highlighted the importance of setting school-wide standards in the beginning of the year to train students to follow rules and understand staff’s expectations.
“If you do it in the beginning, it becomes a well-oiled machine,” she said.
Gambrell also mentioned how faculty and staff prepared for the start of the semester and how they celebrated past achievements while looking forward to accomplishing new goals.
Gambrell shared her excitement for future events planned throughout the year such as a school carnival, daddy and daughter dances, and mother and son game nights. “Our PTO works hard to get those things together,” she said.
She spoke of the school’s focus and goal to increase attendance along with the district’s intention to increase literacy and mathematical skills.
“We’ve been focusing on improving those skills, but we hope to even further those goals by the end of the year,” she said. “The last two years we’ve seen our attendance slip a little bit, and that’s probably because of COVID. We want our children not to come to school when they’re sick, but we want them to be here every possible day they can be.”
To encourage increased attendance, Gambrell said students with perfect attendance will get a chance to win a new bike. “Their names will go in a drawing, and we will have another assembly where we will draw their names. So, some of the kids will go home with a new bike which we hope will help meet our goal.”
In addition to increasing attendance and improving learning skills, Gambrell says the school makes it an enormous priority to keep students safe and practice safety protocol district-wide.
“We have a lot of safety devices. We feel like our parents are comfortable sending their kids to school because they see our presence and we’re just all about safety,” she said.
Along with parent and teacher conferences, the school is implementing new communication tools for teachers and parents to utilize which will help parents stay involved in their child’s learning.
“We have curriculum nights where parents can come in and learn about the materials and lessons their child will be learning about,” said Gambrell. She also mentioned how teachers and parents are continuing to work together and communicate to help provide the best educational outcome for students.
“We’re excited this year to be able to do more. This is the first school year back where we are able to host and do more events for families,” she said.
Gambrell also communicated the campus-wide enthusiasm for new science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics, or STEAM, projects to cater to students’ interest which will incentivize students’ exploration of important topics.
For children who might be struggling with the readjustment of getting back to school, Gambrell suggests parents focus on reassuring their students and emphasizing the positive aspects of school.
“Encourage them that we’re all on the same page. That they are coming to school to learn, but also to have fun. They’re going to build new relationships while they are here and we even have school counselors here that always love to talk about anything,” she said.
Liz Wright is a correspondent for The Augusta Press.
