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Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

Educator for a Day program gives visitors a new look at Bibb schools

It had been years since Macon Water Authority employee Kellie Wyatt stepped into an elementary school.

When she put aside her work as a human resources director Thursday to spend a few hours shadowing the principal of Ingram-Pye Elementary School, she got “flashbacks.”

“It’s been a while,” Wyatt said. “When I was in school, kids were different.”

For the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce’s Educator for a Day program, 62 community leaders were paired in a Bibb County school.

Schools hope to make business and resource contacts, and volunteers hope to get insights into their local public education system.

During part of her day, Wyatt sat with students in a science lab as they learned to use microscopes. She watched a class in computer lab, followed by another group of students who played hockey inside the carpeted gym.

Today’s students talk a lot more, she observed, and some of them even talk back to adults.

“You see the challenges teachers face today,” she said.

Jameelah Ford, an office manager for Capital City Bank, also shadowed at Ingram-Pye on Anthony Road.

“I think every citizen in our county should go and visit their local schools once a year,” principal Baheejah Hasan said. “Many of us think because we went to school we know what school is all about. But as an adult you get to see school in a different mannerism.”

As third-graders walked into the dimly lighted computer lab, where students work to reach grade level in reading and math, Hasan talked to the volunteers.

One problem the school faces, she said, is that many of their students come to school two and three grade levels behind. Then the school has to figure out the best ways of helping the students catch up.

Later, in the gym, Hasan showed them how a game of hockey can get students used to social interaction and get some of their frustrations out, so can they focus better in the classroom.

Some of her students “come to school with a lot of rage, and we have to teach them how to respond to that,” Hasan said.

She also walked visitors through the school’s courtyard, where the school aims to start a horticulture program soon.

Ford also said it’s good to visit public schools to dispel often unfair stereotypes and to see what curriculum students are learning.

“These children are our future business leaders,” Ford said. “This is our community.”