They are back, excited, giggly and can hardly wait.
That’s the kindergarten teachers at École Good Shepherd School, imagine what the five-year-old students are like.
“I am very glad to be back,” said Alison Allison, a Kindergarten teacher at Good Shepherd for 15 years. “I’m so glad to be back with my staff friends and I’m excited about the students going into an actual kindergarten classroom and get to see their older siblings at the building.”
Kindergarten returned Good Shepherd School on Aug. 30 after being in portables at Holy Trinity Academy for the past two years due to high enrolment of around 970 students at the K-Grade 6 school in the Tower Hill area.
With the opening of the K-7 St. Francis of Assisi Academy in Davisburg freeing up space, kindergarten is back at Good Shepherd, with approximately 100 students in three French immersion and two traditional stream classes.
Kindergarten at HTA was like being at a luxury hotel — everyone was accommodating, all the needs were met, people were friendly, but it just wasn’t home.
“There were things we are going to miss at HTA — the staff treated us so well,” Allison said. “Initially, the getting your head wrapped around that kindergarten was over there was a bit of a challenge for parents. But, once we got all our portables there, everything went tickety-boo.”
Dayna Coles has been teaching kindergarten at Good Shep for six years. She’ll miss HTA, but it’s good to be home.
“I’m excited for my students to be around the other French (immersion) students and the other French students to emphasize even more of that French culture in our school,” Coles said.
She stressed the Kindergarten students were given that opportunity with the older high school students at HTA. But, be it ever so humble…
“As wonderful as the HTA staff and students were, it’s always good to come home,” Coles said.
Some of the first kindergarten students who went to HTA in the fall of 2014 will now be going to their third facility in three years — HTA, Good Shepherd for Grade 1 and now St. Francis of Assisi for Grade 2.
That was previously taken into account.
“Two years ago, we grouped kids because they were candidates to go to St. Francis,” Allison said. “There was a lot of long-range planning done for these changes.”
Good Shepherd vice-principal Paul Lavery is also glad to have the five-year-olds back.
“Having them back puts us back in a feeling of being whole — we’re back to being a K-Grade 6 school all in one campus,” Lavery said. “Things worked great at HTA, but they were always separated from really being École Good Shepherd School students in full capacity. We had to bring them back to use the library, things like that.
“Just the whole collective feeling of being one faith community, we are really looking forward to that this year,” Lavery said.
