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FrontPage

Page history last edited by Donna Dodge 3 years, 5 months ago

 

Meet The Teachers!

 

 

 

Joyce Eddy

Kara Marlin

Donna Dodge

 

An award winning team to help your child grow and learn!

 

Teaching Staff

 

My name is Donna Dodge (right), I am the lead teacher in the Montessori Primary Classroom (ages 3-6) located at Northside Child Development Center in Niles Michigan.  I completed my Elementary teaching degree in 1991 from Siena Heights University, located in Adrian, Michigan.  Over the past twenty five years, I have worked in many early childhood classrooms.  I completed a masters degree in Early Childhood in 1997 through Western Michigan University and a Masters in Montessori in May of 2017. I completed my Montessori Training from Edison Lakes Montessori in South Bend, Indiana the summer of 2013. I have a passion for working with young children and I love to bring new information and knowledge to my profession.  Joyce Eddy, an assistant teacher (left)  brings a wide range of early childhood and classroom experiences to our environment.  She has been an employee of Northside for many years.  She is started in Montessori September 2018 and is a huge asset to the program.  Kara Marlin (middle) has joined our team in 2020.  She has worked with the Niles Community Schools since 2017 in many different Kindergarten settings.  We are very happy to have her and she is learning more about Montessori everyday!

 

 

A Caring Environment

 

We start every day outside, provided the temperature is above 10 degrees.  This allows the children entering the classroom to have an attitude that is ready to learn.

 

As a group, we learn the importance of taking care of our environment both inside and out.  We help with snow and leaf removal and trash patrol.

 

We also take care of our classroom.  We clean up after ourselves and keep our environment beautiful.

 

cleaning on the playground

 

 

Writing with the moveable alphabet.

 

 

 

Learning place value.

                                 

      Learning about our world.                                                 Keeping our room clean.                           Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing                                          Food prep in practical life.

                                                                                                                                                                                    with the math materials.

My Favorite Lessons

 

I love to give math and language lessons.  All of the Montessori materials are designed to make learning fun and natural, but the language and math materials are my favorite.  The moveable alphabet allows for even the youngest child to be successful with writing.  I am always amazed at the words that children can write, even before they can read.  I appreciate the design of the math curriculum and the teaching of place value.  When children leave my classroom and enter a general education first grade classroom (our district currently only houses pre-school and kindergarten Montessori) the teachers call and ask what we did to provide such a solid foundation in language and math.  I love to invite them to observe!

 

                                           The cubing chain teaches counting, skip counting and really builds concentration.

 

Favorite Memories

 

As I reflect back over my years of teaching, I have several fond memories.  I recently had a former Montessori student, now in second grade, ask if he could come back and spend a day with us.  He wanted to be a helper.  This young man asked permission from me, his current teacher and his current school principal if he could "skip" a day of school and be a teacher helper in the Montessori classroom.  This young man is a dynamic student and I welcomed him back with open arms.  He spent an entire day with us.  He sat and listened to the younger students as they read several books and read even more to those who couldn't.  He assisted with a student struggling in math and participated in all of the routine activities.  He was an excellent role model and the children really looked up to him.  I would love to see more of our graduates come back and share with the younger children.  I do know that in many Montessori settings, this is a regular scenario.  Our building houses only pre-school and kindergarten children so we do not have the opportunity to older students visit on a regular basis.  I was honored to know that he thought enough about his experience in our classroom that he wanted to come back and share.

 

  All photos by D. Dodge

For further information you may contact me at 269-683-1982 or email at donna.dodge@nilesschools.org

http://nilesschools.schoolwires.net/Page/2394

To visit other pages please click the link below:

 

Grace and Courtesy

Classroom Environment

Classroom Policies

Student Work

Why We Montessori

Field Trips

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments (1)

zech.hoyt@nilesschools.org said

at 1:07 pm on Jun 22, 2017

Donna--this is nice how do you foresee this being used?

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