Meet Ms. Jamie:
Jamie Brown - 1st Grade
If it seems like Jamie Brown is always at school, she is: Monday through Friday. The secret to her seemingly endless enthusiasm and energy for teaching is that she doesn’t work weekends. “My trick is to take time for myself. I work twelve hour days, sure, but I use my weekends to re-energize.” She spends time with her mom and dad, who are her “best friends in the world,” to replenish her heart. Her body is recharged by playing soccer and her mind is fueled by reading and painting. Plus, everything is more fulfilling when you’re in love! Jamie and her new husband enjoy their time together when she is not at school.
Jamie grew up in Sunnyvale and attended Cumberland Elementary School. Her mom was a writer and her father a horse-shoer. “They were both self-employed. They taught me dedication and goal setting.” Her college experience also shaped her as a teacher. “I went to Sonoma State’s Hutchin’s program which is known for teacher preparation. She student taught at a Petaluma charter school called Mary Collins Charter. It is like Stevenson PACT: student centered, hands-on, parent participation. “But it was not developmental,” she says. When she found Stevenson PACT School, she was thrilled to find all she had at Mary Collins, plus the developmental learning approach.
When asked for one thing she could tell us that we may not know about her, she said she loves modern adaptations of classic stories. She recommends the book Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, a retelling of The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. “I have no need to compare originals to the new versions. I just love to see how the stories are adapted.”
1st Grade: Parents in the Classroom Show Kids We Care
According to Jamie Brown, parents provide two important benefits to the classroom: they show kids that adults care about them, and they provide one-on-one adult time for students. “In classes with high parent participation, I see kids with advanced language and communication skills. They speak positively and accurately, and have good social abilities,” she says. They also provide more opportunities for kids to get individualized support. Jamie says she was shy as a child. She was fortunate to have a teacher who met with her after class to find out what she knew and what her interests were. At Stevenson PACT School, having adults helping the teacher means more time for Jamie to get to know her students.
Her approach with shy students is the same as her approach to everyone. “I take it child by child,” she says. “I observe them, starting with the summer play dates. I listen, stay outside after school, let them see me model how to be social and confident with people of all ages.” When working with parents, she does the same thing. She shows them how to be with the students, learns what their interests and strengths are, and checks in frequently. “If something is going less than well, I let them know in an open and friendly way,” she says.
But things are usually going very well. Parents are involved in every subject. They coordinate garden work, FOSS (science) kit curriculum, math games, and literacy centers. They recently helped Jamie implement a map making unit that included the students making maps of the classroom, garden, school, home, city, state, country, continent and the world. And now, they are helping the students travel (virtually) to Antarctica for an integrated unit on penguins.
The kids are happy to come to school because so many people care about them.
