“Just being here and being recognized among our best teachers and staff at Oleai is already an honor,” Carreon said.
To motivate her students, she plans their sessions with activities that are fun and exciting.
“I teach them learning activities through music, movement, art,” she said.
Her students are five to six years old.
“To provide a foundation for children their age is such a challenge because of their attention span,” she said. “The other thing that they need to learn is that there is a time to have fun and there is also a time to learn and concentrate and do hard work.”
She also teaches her students how to interact with other children.
“Socialization is just as important as academics. With kindergarten I really push with character education because you want to look at a child as a whole. I motivate them through intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic meaning that the kids come to school because they want to do it. That they see that school is important,” Carreon said.
She supports the Board of Education’s proposal for full-day kindergarten classes.
A child who is not provided with the skills are necessary for first-grade will find school hard, she added.
“Because of the current time constraints it’s very hard to meet learning objectives. I think if we have full-day classes we would have a better success rate,” she said.
