826 Valencia is delighted to announce that Janice Reilly from Commodore Sloat Elementary School in San Francisco is our October Teacher of the Month. Janice has taught second grade at Commodore Sloat for the past twelve years.
Students, parents, and colleagues sent us a lovingly prepared album filled with letters, drawings, and photographs testifying to Ms. Reilly’s dedication, kindness, and high quality of teaching. A common theme is that Ms. Reilly appreciates and respects each child in her classes, and tailors her teaching so that each student receives the attention and challenges that he or she needs. One parent wrote: “Ms. Reilly is a wonderful kind teacher with unlimited patience”, another said: “The most impressive aspect of Ms. Reilly is how kind and respectful she is toward her students. Each child is made to feel special and capable of excelling at school.” And one student wrote: “Ms. Reilly is kind to my classmates and me. Sometimes my friends get stuck with their work and Mrs. Reilly comes and explains what to do.”
Ms. Reilly makes learning fun. Her students have build 3-dimensional models of geometric shapes to illustrate math concepts and “cooked” stone soup for a Thanksgiving project. She takes her second graders on wonderful field trips to the Academy of Sciences and the de Young Museum. But most wonderful of all is the yearly expedition to her family’s organic dairy farm in Marin County, where students have the opportunity to see a working dairy, feed a newborn calf, and learn about the environment first hand—all that, plus go swimming too! The album we received was chock full of photographs of beaming, awestruck second-graders surrounded by cows in bucolic Marin County, and of notes proclaiming it “the best field trip ever!”
Ms. Reilly is a truly dedicated teacher who loves and appreciates her students. Like all great teachers, she spends many extra hours in the classroom after the school day ends. One of the letters we received noted that Ms. Reilly is “truly exceptional and serves as a model to teachers and parents alike. I hope you will recognize her work.” We are more than thrilled to do so. Congratulations Ms. Reilly!
