By Marianela Nuñez
Three year-old Keeler Merrill wakes up happy to go to school every day. “Gaga, wanna run?” he asks his grandmother when they get there. Wearing masks, they run to his star on the hardtop of the school’s parking lot to get his temperature checked and start his day.
Keeler goes to Rosebud Academy (Barrington), the Pre-K location for Saint Rose of Lima School in Haddon Heights. His parents, both school teachers, rely on his maternal grandparents for help with dropoff and pickup.
His grandfather, Bruce Haines, said they are all grateful to have found a school home where Keeler is well cared for and socializing with other children. He also complimented the school’s commitment to health and safety protocols and stressed that “they are clearly taking it very seriously.”
Rosebud is one of 24 preschools throughout the Diocese of Camden helping students adapt and thrive in the world of COVID-19. Fern Love, Rosebud Academy Director, said that her school children and teachers are experiencing “normal life under very abnormal circumstances.”
To welcome the youngest students while maintaining social distance in the classroom, teachers have turned individual desks into special homes. Keeler and his Rosebud classmates settle into their “nests,” which they decorated.
Other schools have developed their own concepts and language for their youngest students who are beginning their school years with masks, protective plexiglass shields and other precautions.
At Saint Mary School in Williamstown, Kathy Wisniewski reports her Pre-K4 students are excited about “going to work” in their own little offices.
“The kids are now used to the routines and love to remind their teachers about them,” observed Wisniewski.
“They are young and little, and they do love to play” she said.
Elaine Contrevo appreciates that her young students at Saint Mary’s are still able to participate in typical Pre-K activities. “We have our circle time together and they are singing and dancing. We are playing as usual, just with modifications,” she said.
Assumption Regional School in Galloway seats two Pre-K students to a table, separated by a plexiglass shield. Pre-K4 teacher Tammy Palmieri creates new themes to personalize the students’ space.”
“Since there are two students at each table, the students feel a sense of being in a group and having a table buddy who share a theme,” she said. With a back-to-school superhero theme, Palmieri started the year with a different superhero sign at the top of each shield.
Assumption principal Joan Dollinger likes the superhero theme because superheroes wear masks, so students are like superheroes when they wear their masks. She said that most children love to please their teachers and do what they are asked to do.
Megan Sooy, who also teaches Pre-K at Assumption, describes the young students as very adaptable. Some of them “have never been to school before now so they don’t see anything different about putting their masks on each day and being the superheroes they are,” she said. “No one has a more optimistic outlook on life than a preschooler.”
Many schools have centers around the classroom where students enjoy resources to develop different skills like gross motor, fine motor, sensory, language and math skills. Principal Dollinger said Assumption has adjusted by having centers that come to the students instead of the students going to the centers.
Outside time is a priority at all schools. “We are blessed with five different spaces,” said Stacy Orlowski, another Assumption Pre-K teacher. “The students can hula hoop, jump rope, or play with the class-assigned balls. We also have an area with playground equipment. That area is fogged [with disinfectant] after each use.”
Teachers report that frequent cleaning and sanitizing indoors were already standard practice with young children. At Saint Mary’s School in Vineland, teacher Kelly Moughan said the students have always been great desk wipers. The students “are using hand sanitizer a little bit more and washing hands but with the cleaning of the classroom, it is something that [they] have always done,” said Moughan.
Classrooms are professionally cleaned at the end of each day, as well.
Across the board, teachers and principals say the biggest challenge of a socially distant pre-k class is not giving a comforting hug or gentle pat on the back as often as children may need it. Young children often expect and need these kinds of reassurances when they feel especially sensitive, miss their home or have an injury. Teachers have become experts in balancing the children’s needs for comfort with the priority to keep them healthy. Teachers and students stay safe when appropriate touch is needed most because of the many precautions in place at all preschools in the diocese, including masks and frequent hand washing and sanitizing.
In this pandemic, socially distant world “teachers have found the ways to love and learn the children behind the masks,” said Keeler’s grandma Pat.
Despite the challenges, like many other children in South Jersey preschool classrooms, Keeler “looks forward to going to school” at Rosebud every morning, said grandpa Bruce. “He comes out excited telling you what he did that day,” Bruce said. Recently Keeler was so excited he learned the word “hola” in his Spanish class and talks about his new friends.
Many South Jersey Catholic Schools still have space in their preschools. As Saint Mary’s, Williamstown, principal Patricia Mancuso said, “We learn, we grow and we will continue to do whatever it takes to keep our little people here.”
Marianela Nuñez is Field Consultant for the Latino Enrollment Initiative, Office of Catholic Schools, Diocese of Camden.