Imagine you are almost four years old and fire trucks are your life. You love them.
Your whole life is your family, your friends, and your school. Six months ago, you started at a new school called Celebree of Franklin Cool Springs.
You have spent the last six months building a relationship with your new teachers. They’ve taken time to get to know you. They greet you at the door each day, they listen to your stories at lunch, and they know you. They make you feel safe in your classroom and your voice feels heard.
They have taught you that you can always ask, and that no questions is silly. They’ve helped you connect with your friends, and you’ve learned how to communicate, share, and collaborate.
Your fourth birthday is coming up and there’s something you want to ask. So, you tell your mom that there’s something you need to ask your teacher. You want to have a firetruck birthday. You ask your teacher if everyone can wear red clothes for your birthday. Your teacher explains that there are no guarantees, but that we can ask and see what happens.
The good news is that you go to Celebree, and we do our best to make every child’s wish come true. So, as word spreads of your wish, everyone steps up to help. Classes donate their fire jackets from their pretend play, so that every one of your classmates can have a jacket. The admin team makes the welcome board fire truck red to announce that it’s your birthday today. And one of your teachers made a phone call, a firetruck has just pulled up to your school.
We can’t always make every day magical. We can’t always fix every booboo or answer every request. But what we can do is help children feel heard and secure. We can empower them to know that no ask is too big. We can create a space of connection, and safety, so that your class family wants to help create these special moments. As a school, we empower our teachers to create excitement and moments of learning, knowing they have the support of their administration along the way.
One of the best parts of early childhood education is, we don’t know what they’ll remember. We don’t know what lesson will spark a new interest, or a life long love, and we don’t know what they’ll picture when they think about their time here at school. But we do know is when they think back on this time in their young lives, they’ll know they were loved.
And that today, we probably made a core memory for our PreK Kiddos.
