Heather Jenkins and Beth Wark
Grade 2
We are thrilled be teaching second grade at the Greenland Central School this year! As you know we will be team teaching this year. This is our third year of teaching together and we want to assure you that our number one priority is providing your child with a consistent and productive Grade 2 experience. We both have similar philosophies of teaching and are excited to be working together again this year.
Our Backgrounds:
Heather lives in Portsmouth with her husband and two young daughters. Grace is five years old and Lily is just over three years old. Grace is very excited to be starting kindergarten this year and Lily will be starting preschool! Heather and John-Michael have been married for eleven years and are very happy to be living in Portsmouth. Heather graduated with a BA from UNH in 1990. She worked in the high-tech industry for a number of years before going back and completing her Masters in Education, with a concentration in literacy, from UNH.
Beth was born and raised in Caribou, Maine, and graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1986 with a degree in Early Childhood/Elementary Education. She has been married for twenty-five years to her wonderful husband Graham, who is her High School sweetheart. They have two beautiful and amazing daughters. Andrea is 23 and just finished her Masters in Education at UNH to become a teacher herself. Beth’s daughter Kayla is 18 and is just starting college. Beth’s family moved to Stratham ten years ago from Bangor, Maine and has grown to love this area very much.
Our Philosophy:
We believe that our task as educators is to provide a caring, safe, and empowering environment that promotes learning for all children. First and foremost, our classroom is a place of caring, a place where all students are accepted and respected for who they are. We strive to create the type of environment in which all children will feel safe. Safety not only hinges on physical safety and caring but also has a great deal to do with acceptance
and respect from the teacher(s) and the children’s peers. We also feel that giving children a variety of opportunities to succeed is essential to having them fully understand the power of education. It is with
continued reinforcement and meaningful feedback that we help students gain the self-esteem needed to have success in school. Our goal is to ensure that each child has the confidence to take risks with learning and to try new things!
As teachers, we realize that we are responsible for enabling each child to succeed. This means really getting to know each student. It means understanding their abilities, their limits, their likes and their dislikes. It is finding what it is about each child that motivates them to learn. Therefore, we will be doing our work in a variety of different ways. Each day the children will be taught in a whole group setting, in small groups and individually as needed.
We have set up a list a classroom rules. These rules are consistent with the rules posted in the classrooms of your child’s peers. The rules are as follows:
Be Respectful
Be Responsible
Be Safe
We have talked about the rules in depth so that everyone is clear on the expectations we have for them and for each other. We feel very strongly about all of us working closely together to build a community within 2JW. We tell the children that we are very much like a family, and therefore, we need to take care of our classroom, our school, and each other just as a family does. So far, we feel successful in establishing the foundations for this in the few weeks we have spent together. These children are a great group of kids. They are a caring, hardworking and respectful group.
We have high expectations for both the children and ourselves for what we will accomplish this school year. A daily schedule is also on this website so you know what your child is doing each day and what times they will be out of the room for their Specials. We have a busy and demanding curriculum to get through by June. We will all be working very hard, and we look forward to the challenge ahead of us!