Latest / The Recess-An Inside Look at the Auburn School District / Episode #37-Nikki Clemons, Director of Early Learning

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Episode #37-Nikki Clemons, Director of Early Learning · The Recess-An Inside Look at the Auburn School District

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the recess podcast.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Alan Spicati, the proud superintendent of the Auburn School District.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: The recess is a place where I like to tell the stories of the people and the programs in the Auburn School District that make this such a great place to be a student or work or to raise your family.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have so many amazing things happening out there.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I see them all the time out in schools and uh working with the people who support schools.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we use this podcast to get the word out so that all of you know some of the great things that are happening uh that you may or may not be aware of.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And today is gonna be another fun one.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I am joined by the director of early learning, Nikki Clemens, and she's gonna tell you about all things early learning and uh introduce a little bit about herself and her path.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think we're all gonna learn and hopefully have some fun.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, Nikki, welcome.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm excited to have you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's been fun.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think you were doing your internship my first year as superintendent, if I recall.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: First or second year.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think actually that was the first year I was hired as an administrator.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I remember being there right at the beginning, and uh it's been fun watching you grow in your career, and you have become such a great expert in all things uh pre-K, and we're gonna share that with everybody in a few minutes.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna start with my favorite question, uh, which is who is your favorite teacher and why?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: I love this question.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, especially because so many of my colleagues got into teaching because they have a favorite teacher, they can pinpoint that, and I can't.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, when I think about teachers and try to think of who my favorite, I don't no one comes to mind right away, um, but a whole team of teachers does.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: So when I was in sixth grade, my first year of middle school, we were split into teams.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was six A, six B, six C.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I had four teachers, and they were amazing.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: So my English teacher, my science teacher, my social studies teacher, and I forget the third one.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe three of the four were my favorites.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but they really stand out in my mind, and I just really loved all of them, and they made the transition from elementary school to middle school just so amazing.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: We'll hope that number four is not listening.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um perfect.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, good experience in school and fast forward and share with the audience what was your pathway into your the current work and position?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: I uh went into education a little bit later in my career, not too late, but a little bit later.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: I graduated from college, went into the workforce, I had a psych degree.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then I went back to school to get my master's in uh special education, early childhood special education.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I took that path after some experiences with a cousin that I have.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: He passed away on his 38th birthday.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: He had pretty severe cerebral palsy.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I just I watched him and his family navigate the different systems growing up, and I just kind of wanted to explore that world.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went back to school for that and then came to Auburn when I graduated and have been here ever since.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're glad you're here, and let's get to the matter in hand.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um so our listeners may know a lot, they may know a little, uh, they may have a two or three year old and be very interested in this conversation.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are the preschool programs offered in the Auburn School District?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll try to be concise in my answer.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we have a we have I say four different programs in three different classrooms.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And what I mean by that is so ECAP is our early childhood education and assistance program that is our state-funded preschool program for primarily lower income families, um, but families who have a variety of risk factors and um may need some more support prior to entry to school.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a a very rigid application process for that.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Then we have our developmental preschool program where students either qualify for special education services for that program, or parents can sign up their children to pay to be a part of that program as peers.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a blended model.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: We've got students who have disabilities and students who don't in the same classroom.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: So we have our transition to kindergarten program that is also a state-funded program, um, and it is for students who are four years old who need additional support prior to the year they'll be in kindergarten.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's great, and that's something that I know uh we've built up quite a bit over the past uh certainly my time in Auburn starts in 2015, and I know a few years ago we reached a point where we had doubled our seats in pre-K.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And part of it is uh having all of these options and the transition to kindergarten is the most recent development.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Each of those serves a really unique purpose.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think my own kids went through uh the second option that you described as an early childhood program that was a mix of uh students with disabilities um and uh we pay tuition.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it was a great experience for both of my kids.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there's many different ways to do it.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I'm really proud of in our school district is we set out to have uh early learning opportunities as much as possible in every neighborhood elementary school.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember um there was a point where that wasn't true, and and some of that was just due to the lack of space.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um so before our 2016 bond, we had about two thousand more elementary kids than we had seats in the building.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We had tons and tons of portables, and we just didn't have the space to bring in some many schools did not have the space to bring in uh certain early learning programs.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: We had the the little house behind Pioneer Elementary that had a few ECAP classrooms, and and uh we really did the best we could, but now that we have the space and we have the will, um refresh my memory.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have an ECAP program in almost every elementary school, correct?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: We have close.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we have a developmental preschool program in every elementary school.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got preschool in every elementary school, and then we have ECAP in um nine of our elementary schools in TK and eight.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what's great about that is then families are connecting when kids are learning how to do school and they go to the library or they go through the lunch line or whatever that experience is, uh it's all relevant and the family is building a relationship with the school staff.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we're really proud of that.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some districts have like early childhood centers, and and I'm sure that there's some beauty to that as well.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I love that families are together, and if you have a second grader and a fourth grader and a four-year-old, uh they can all be in the same school.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we feel really good about that and the progress we've made.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, uh off the top of my head, I think we had maybe 400 seats when I started, and we have like 900 now.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, close to a thousand.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: All right, which is really cool.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was just a guess.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you were close.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Close, but it's even better in reality.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're really excited about that.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kudos to yourself and your team uh and a lot of people doing great work.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's touch on something that I think to some people might seem obvious, and to others uh it's really controversial, but we know a lot now.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So can you talk to the audience about why preschool is important for children?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um preschool is so important.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: So you were talking about having preschool in every building, and when students are learning how to do school, they are in the building, getting to know teachers, getting to know faces of staff members, getting to know administrators.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: I talked to parents about um getting to know the playground and understanding the rules around the playground in that building and understanding and seeing the other kids in line for cafeteria or um for lunch.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the cool part about having programs in every school.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: The important part about preschool is just getting to kids early so that if they come to us at three years old, we have a lot of opportunity to build their skills up so that they are ready to learn and ready to be part of the school community when they transition to kindergarten.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: And by ready to learn, I really mean there's a lot of a lot of skills, such as following directions, being able to come in and understand how and where to put your backpack away, um, building the skills to sit at a table and work as a community and be part of a community.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: They're also learning a lot of academic skills and and um fine and gross motor, how to handle art materials, what to do with art materials, what to do with scissors, all of those sorts of things.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um so when we get kids in at three and four before kindergarten, we can practice all of those things and they're ready to go when they get to kindergarten.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um the other thing is that we can do early intervention.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: So we can get kids in, and if we have concerns, we can refer them for a special education evaluation to see if they might need additional support.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was thinking about when we started to ramp up on trans they call it transition to kindergarten now, transitional kindergarten.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of the questions was okay, so we're using a uh, you know, a a a teacher who's qualified to teach kindergarten.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that there was a misconception that we were kindergartenizing fourth four-year-olds.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I had a really good conversation with one of our TK teachers who said, honestly, in the fall, it really looks like a preschool.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in the spring, it looks a lot like a kindergarten class.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So talk about for again preschool in in our context is three-year-olds and four-year-olds, talk about that progression of learning and growth and development through those two important years.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think the beauty of the progression in learning and the beauty of being able to have three and four-year-olds together is really there's still so much joy in learning and in being in school.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they want to be around their friends, they um they learn through play.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is about exploration.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they're just so excited to be there.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And being able to kind of harness that and have them continue to be excited while also honing in on some of those skills, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: So you learn through play, and you can learn, you know, you can take that play and apply it to what you're doing at the table and do an activity there, and that's also learning.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And they, there are so many things that they're learning, and there's so much brain development in that age.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's just really cool to have them, you know, kind of explore something in one area of the classroom and then come and apply it to another area and be excited to share their friends and be excited to go home and share with their families.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just really cool to see all of that growth and development during that time period.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then just briefly talk about how students are well prepared for kindergarten at the end of uh either high quality preschool, or we know that there are other options, um, and and and we respect and and I want kids to have a good developmental process, whether it's with the Auburn School District or uh in another setting, or even uh potentially i in a home setting.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um talk about what it means to be well prepared for kindergarten, yeah.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Having a quality three and four-year-old experience.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's it's about learning those things that we do in school that we don't even really think about.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as teachers, we've been in classrooms most of our lives.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so walking into a classroom and opening a book or finding a piece of paper or just finding where you sit comes natural.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so kids who have been able to be in a preschool classroom and learn those things, it helps them, it helps prepare them for kindergarten.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the other beautiful thing is that our teachers get to know these kids really well, and so they can connect with the kindergarten teachers and share like, here's what you're gonna love about this kid, and here's where they might need a little bit of support or a little bit of extra planning on day one, but we can really partner with each other to make that transition, and so they're ready for kindergarten, and we can help our kindergarten teams be ready for them as well.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent, good.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And who cries more on the first day of school, the kids or the parents?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: The parents.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, just that we established that.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think sometimes one of the best ways to learn about a program is to hear about a success story or one or more.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So share a success story or the floor's open if you want to do more than one uh in our preschool programs.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'll share two stories.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: So one, I'll start with just a really fun example that I always think of from when I was teaching.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was uh the early childhood or the developmental preschool teacher at Chinook Elementary.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a student who had very limited verbal communication, um, was very focused on certain objects.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: He really loved this blue truck that had flames on the side.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he loved the color pink.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: He he was uh a challenge to figure out.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: And once we figured him out and he just kind of opened that world up for him through, gave him some tools for him to communicate and figured out what really drove him and where his joy was.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: He did a lot of things and he loved participating and he really loved to tell us what the weather was gonna or what the weather was that day.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: We had a system in circle where students would go look out the window and then they could pick a couple words that just described the weather and tell their friends what the weather was like that day.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he happened to get that job, the weather reporter, on a day when we had visitors in our classroom.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: They were coming to see what the curriculum looked like in our classroom.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a big group of people standing around watching circle time, and he got up in front of everybody and he went and he looked out the window and he came back and he picked sunny, and I think the word was warm, um, but it was on a pink background.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And he very excitedly announced to everybody that the weather was sunny and pink, and it was just it was so fun because he was so excited to share that, and he was really a part of the community and participating, and all the kids were celebrating that he was doing this job, and and it didn't matter that there were a bunch of other visitors in our classroom.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: He was just able to share that skill, and he just was so excited that it was pink.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that was that's my favorite example from when I was a teacher.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: I we also have a really great success story of um a family that was in our ECAP program, and this was they had a student with a disability, and they really wanted this student to be in our ECAP program.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: And for a lot of reasons, ECAP was a great place for this family.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, all of our ECAP classrooms have family support specialists who are basically social workers that help support families in that program.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: And and this family really used that support.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so we wanted to keep this student in that classroom if we could.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um but the student had a pr had a very impactful disability, and the the staff members had a hard time kind of figuring this student out.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so the first part of the year was really a lot of meetings about what do we do, and there was a lot of learning, and there were a lot of systems set up by our special education teacher, and just a lot of connections between the special education teacher and the ECAP team.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: And by the end of the year, the ECAP team loved this student.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: They they saw um this student blossom, they saw so much growth, they became huge advocates for the inclusive practices that we have in ECAP, and it was just such a shift for everybody.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's I still think of that student um when we're talking about our program.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's another success story.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two great examples, and uh, you know, you just think of how formative that is for a student and setting them up for the next level.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when we were off the air, you made a comment that you love to talk about preschool.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: What do you love about preschool?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I love the growth that happens.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think I mentioned earlier that there's just so much brain development that happens before the age of five.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I've been working with preschoolers, this is probably my 13th or 14th year in early learning.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's just so fun to walk into a classroom and see kids excited about learning and they're doing um, they're not necessarily just sitting and doing a worksheet.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: They're coloring and they're playing and they're excited to share what they're learning through those things.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I just I love to see that.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and now I have my own kids who are that same age, and so I get to see it from a parent side, and it's just really cool.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's a cool age.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're so curious, and uh it's it's just a delight, and uh and we haven't mentioned, but they're also really cute.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's they are very cute.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: It makes my day, you know.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I remember being an elementary school principal and going down to kindergarten or preschool would completely turn your day around no matter what was happening.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we love we love the kids and we are so thankful for all of our staff who work so you're gonna say one final thing?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was just gonna say I have a lot of principals that tell me that uh preschool and kindergarten are their happy places.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: They go there when they need to just kind of get a dose of fun.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that you've explained like some of the under the hood stuff, right?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we go in there and we just get, you know, like a joy rush.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: But there's actually like wiring in the brains happening right before our eyes.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's playing with blocks and all that.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned staff, and I just I do need to give a shout out to our amazing early learning staff because they are like you said, you might go in and see a student playing with blocks, but those teachers and the staff in that classroom have like carefully crafted a learning opportunity, and they're stretching that learning, and they might be there feeding a student vocabulary about blocks, or teaching them how to build with the blocks, or teaching them um, you know, counting and patterns with those blocks.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it's very carefully crafted, and there's so much hard work that goes behind those scenes to bring that joy to learning.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So while you're while you're giving that shout out, so there's there's teachers, there's paraeducators, uh, who who all makes those three uh early early childhood programs go in our district?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um each of the programs has a lead teacher and paraeducators or teaching assistants.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: So different levels of staffing in the different programs, and then we have the family support specialist that I mentioned for our ECAP program.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: So those are the primary um day-to-day staff members that make those classrooms go around.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we also have Luisa Ardilla, who is an administrator that oversees our ECAP classrooms, and we also have our program specialists.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um we have Sarah Madison and Kara Abernathy who help me um be in classrooms and so they're on the ground supporting teachers, supporting students, and just really doing the work.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not nothing can be done in silo, and I want to make sure that I'm shouting them at it as well.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's great, and that's what we're here for on the recess podcast, uh, to get some of the behind the scenes uh actors out in front as well, because they play a really important role in supporting our students and supporting our staff.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for uh giving us a window into the world of preschool, and it's it's fun to hear your enthusiasm, and it's probably hard not to be enthusiastic working with that age.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're gonna close the preschool conversation, maybe almost take you back to when you were in preschool or at least in elementary school.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna ask my final question what was your favorite thing to do at recess?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: This is gonna be such a nerdy answer.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we went through a real phase of stickers and trading stickers, and we had all the fancy stickers, and we had holographic stickers and fuzzy stickers, and we had them in these big notebooks, and we would trade them and we would sit and do that.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: It felt like hours, but recess doesn't last for hours.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: But that's my favorite recess memory.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love that you said that because I distinctly remember that from when I was in elementary school, uh, and nobody's mentioned it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's cool.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's stickers.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great thing sparkly.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is a great memory.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my guest has been Nikki Clemens, she's the director of early learning for the Auburn School District.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I I just love this topic.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very proud of the work that you've done and all of your colleagues uh and the opportunities that we have continued to expand and to bring to every school in the district, and it's something I'm quite proud of and uh look forward to being in my next preschool class visit.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Nikki.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks to all of you listening.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, if you love preschool, or maybe you know one of those uh younger parents or parents of younger kids who might be interested in this, please pass it along.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Recess Podcast is a production of the Auburn School District.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to thank Vicky Alonzo for keeping us uh straight with the podcasting software technology.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, I'll see you on the recess podcast.