Kathleen Towner, a “Little Hive,” or preschool, teacher at Hutchison School has made a lasting impression on many of her students and their parents with her passion and flair for teaching.
Throughout high school and some of college, Towner thought she wanted to begin a career in fashion merchandising, but, ultimately, she decided that that route wasn’t for her.
“I thought, maybe this is not the direction I want to go,” she says. “Just by encouragement from friends, I took a children’s literature class, one of my favorite courses, and I thought, this is what I want to do.”
Towner had previously spent some time working with children babysitting and helping with vacation bible school at her church, so she knew she had a knack and a passion for working with children already. She changed her major at the University of Tennessee from fashion merchandising to K-8 Education with an endorsement in Early Childhood Education.
Of the 39 years Towner has been teaching, she has spent nearly 30 years teaching kindergarten and preschool at Hutchison.
“It’s a wonderful place to work,” she says. “I feel supported by the administration. They really care about us. And if you feel like the administration cares about you, you want to perform well. It’s like a family here.”
In the classroom, Towner and her colleagues follow the Reggio Emilia approach, a style of teaching typically applied to preschool education that involves teachers acting as co-learners or collaborators and designing curricula around childrens’ interests and needs.
“Everything is individualized, and the kids are all different, especially at this stage,” she says. “Some are 3 before they come, and then some don’t turn 3 until May. And that’s a huge growth area for each child during that time of development.”
Towner implements certain strategies and methods to help each child learn individually and at their own pace. One involves asking students to tell her “secrets” about the lesson they’ve learned each day.
“Often, if you ask them the question and one person says something, they all say it,” she says. “So I ask them to tell me a secret in the morning, and then we’ll all find out. And just the fact that they could almost tell me verbatim what it says in the book, it’s like, wow, they get it. It’s about finding something that they’re interested in.”
Towner says that it is important to find where students’ interests lie and to figure out what their learning needs are, whether they are visual, tactile, or auditory learners.
“I remember growing up, thinking, ‘I don’t get this,’ but that’s the only way it was taught,” she says. “And to see how far we’ve come in education and how we teach to each child’s needs and learning styles, it’s amazing, these opportunities for children.”
Towner makes it a point to include parents on students’ progress by posting Instagram photos and publishing blog posts to share what students learn each week.
“It makes you feel connected,” she says. “A lot of children don’t verbalize when they get home about what they did at school. I list questions of what the parents can ask their children about what they’ve learned that week, specific things I know the children will be able to answer, just to get that conversation going from school to home.”
Towner credits her former fourth grade teacher for being an exemplary role model who shaped her teaching methods today.
“Everybody said my fourth grade teacher was the mean teacher,” she says. “I felt like she knew that I thought that, and she went the extra mile and made me feel loved. It was like she got me. And I think about her often in my teaching.”
Towner offers some solid advice for other teachers. “The main thing is to love the children,” she says. “And love them well.”
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