These days things are a little different at MMMS. Okay, they’re a lot different.

“This year, instead of staying in our own classroom, the kids stay,” Stanton said. “We move so they can keep their area sanitized. It’s been a little bit of a challenge, but not too bad. We have a cart that we load up at the beginning of the day, and just go to the next spot.”

The school is using the blended approach–meaning half of the students attending in person go on Tuesdays and Thursdays with the other half going Wednesdays and Fridays. Everybody is remote on Mondays.

“We have time on Mondays to video our lessons for the week,” Stanton said. “If you’re going to do a Google Meet with your classroom, Monday is a good day to do it since you don’t have other classes. Sometimes I have a couple of students that need help that are remote, so I do Google Meets with the them Mondays, individually.”

Stanton says there are plenty of challenges with all students remote at least three days a week, especially with the subject she teaches–math.

“From my point of view, it probably is the hardest subject,” Stanton said. “You have to work out the problems, and that’s hard to do on technology. A lot of students are still getting paper copies, but they take pictures of their assignment and turn it on Google Classroom. It’s a lot of taking pictures and turning in assignments.”

Stanton says she has learned a lot this school year, lessons that will be able to help her classes for years to come.

“Technology was not my friend before this year,” Stanton chuckled. “I’ve learned so much, and I’m so thankful for professional development we had during the summer that we could learn more stuff, and colleagues. Everybody’s been so great about helping other teachers.”

“I’ve learned so much that I definitely next year or the year after or five years from now, will still be using Google Classroom,” Stanton added. “And probably still making videos too because when students are absent, it’s not like before where you have to come back and re-teach them. They can watch the video and be at the same spot the other students are at. So that’s great!”

In her nomination, Janice Wright told us, “Stacy Stanton is a wonderful teacher. She is very knowledgeable of how students learn differently! She spends many of her own lunch breaks helping students that are struggling. She is very hands on in teaching and never shows frustration! She is very dedicated to helping her students learn and be successful!

If you would like to see others we have honored as Most Valuable Teachers, just go here.