Mrs. Lisa Freeman is a second grade teacher that goes above and beyond the call of duty of a teacher. I am a mother of 8 children and for the past 18 years of my children having teachers, I have never seen a teacher so dedicated in helping her student succeed individually and also as a class. Her classes motto is “No one gets left behind.” We are year round school and a lot of times kids are just taught as a group, but in Mrs. Freeman’s class they are all individuals and she gives them the opportunity to grow individually. Mrs. Freeman has divided the class into buddies. Each person has a buddy they will have all year. They do a lot with their buddies. The best thing is the newsletter there class does. Each group of buddies does a part of the newsletter (which is more like a newspaper). The newsletter has everything a paper has. Each time they switch with what their assignment is, from editorial, interviewing a person at the school and they come up with the questions what to ask, class news, comic strip, crossword, sports, and many more. The students write it all themselves. Mrs. Freeman invites many people to visit her class and talk to the students.
Mrs. Freeman believes these children learn in many different ways. So she gives them every kind of opportunity to learn from writing, memorizing, talking, practicing, observing, experiencing, etc. A lot of writing is done her class, from copying, sharing experience of the last week, and writing about an activity they did as a class. I first thought when I came to help that it was to teach proper writing skills, because we mark the student’s mistakes with proper editing symbols, making sure they write the paragraphs in proper form and then, they would correct them, but I learned when I asked Mrs. Freeman about all the writing. She went on to explain the more they write the faster they learn to read. They write, write and then correct it into a final draft. Later in the morning the students do centers to reinforce the concepts a second grader needs to improve in reading, spelling, writing, and math. The centers use all the different aspects of learning from working with your group, to learning individually. From Story Theater where they read parts of play to exploring the encyclopedia to learn about new things and then write down what they have learned and put into a class collection and even memorizing a poem every week by copying down each sentence until they memorize it. The other centers are reading individually with the teacher, practice spelling, computer, finishing and correcting writing assignments, and now mastering the addition tables.
Mrs. Freeman has these children experience life in many ways. It includes the children taking turns to helping feed the class pet -Jak Jak a pet tarantula, with crickets and watching him molt and leave his new skin. The whole class entered the Reflections contest run by the PTA. The theme was Diversity means and Mrs. Freeman wanted the children to learn what that means so she each child come dressed the same on one day. Each child came in jeans and a white t-shirt. They were expected to do everything the same all day long. They ate the same lunch – French toast sticks(she did give an option later to have something else if the child didn’t like them), they all had to play on the grass because they all couldn’t do the same thing on the playground at the same time. They all got a 100% on the spelling because one kid got a 100%. They all had to sit in a circle so no one was closer to the teacher than another. (Each week they move up a row closer to the teacher so they all get a turn to be in front) While the children were off track she gave them a packet to help them write about this experience so they would know what diversity meant. Then when they came back on they could write their entry to the PTA Reflections contest. They had the most entries of one class in the whole school. The week after that they also won the most reading hours outside of class award for the whole school too.
Mrs. Freeman makes each child feel special and only has positive things to say about them and to them. She does many exciting projects and everything comes down to their class theme that “no one gets left behind.” She was hired at Rose Creek the year that these children started kindergarten when they discovered they needed 7 classes for their grade. There are still 7 classes of these 2nd graders. Every year since then she has moved up each grade, because they need a 7th teacher to add to the grade. They are the largest group in the whole school. Two children in this year’s class have had her for 3 years and they aren’t upset at ALL! This teacher is amazing it is hard to put into words what this teacher does. Her blog can be an example of some of the stuff she does. http://lfreemanclass.blogspot.com/ That is why I think Mrs. Lisa Freeman should be given the teacher feature award! Mrs. Freeman has my 7th child in her class and as many teachers that I have experience over the years she is at the top. 2 of my other children have had a teacher that received many awards including state teacher of the year and I thought she was amazing, but Mrs. Freeman deserves this teacher feature award because she knows “NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND” in her class!!
–Sharynn Moore