Message from Anjali
Staff Specialists Build Bridges
One of the ways the PIC's After School Center (ASC) attracts high-quality, highly-motivated, talented teachers is by sharing a precious handful of them with the Early Learning program.
This January, ASC welcomes Rachel Kolber, a veteran early-learning teacher formerly from the Peanuts classroom, as the new Art Specialist. The school-age children are delighted to recognize a teacher from their “wonder years” (that long-ago time when they were 3-years-old).
Rachel joins Linda Delenick and Amanda East as one of three Specialists on staff, and continues a legacy that began with Ashley Capelle and included Rachel Parker, Chantha Luk and Craig Lamm.
We are fortunate to be able to hire “specialists,” who work as teachers in every classroom at PIC, from infants to fifth graders. The Specialist is chosen for a particular talent or interest, such as art, drama, literacy or movement/sports.
S/he devotes the mornings to the early-learning children, and the afternoons to the school-age children, and in doing so, functions as an important bridge-builder for the PIC community of teachers and learners.
A PIC Specialist enjoys an extraordinary vantage point in being able to daily document and apply insights about the social-emotional learning that kids acquire in their progression from infancy to tween-hood. In fact PIC is unique in offering a programmatic and “social-emotional-learning” bridge between the early-learning and school-age experiences for children and parents and teachers.
Social-Emotional-Learning (SEL) is a rapidly expanding area of interest and expertise in the early childcare and out-of-school-time professions. Research has shown that high-quality afterschool programs do support the development of social and emotional competencies (knowledge, attitudes, skills) in young people. Just as important is the fact that high quality early-learning programs provide the groundwork for such development to occur, once again proving how fortunate we are to work and learn in so well-integrated an environment as PIC’s!
Classrooms