“I am an outside-the-box thinker,” Gretchen declared, and she backs it up with evidence. She has received multiple grants to create unusual learning experiences with her students, including creating and performing a musical with her second-grade students not too long ago. The musical is called “Squirm” – which sounds appropriate for second graders. 

“Children really learn through play. Their play is their work. What we do as teachers is find ways to scaffold and add learning to that play. Kids may be just playing with Clay-Doh, but what they’re doing with it, and the conversations that take place while they’re doing it are important. They might be learning how to count or creating sets of things that go together. They don’t realize what they’re learning at the time. You should fill a child’s day with their interests, and then you can incorporate all these other areas of development. If you’re playing dinosaurs outside, you’re learning gross motor skills.  If you’re painting or drawing dinosaurs, that works on fine motor skills. That’s what a quality preschool strives to do – the teachers see what the kids are interested in and build upon it.”