I think that my very favorite thing about Pine Grove is that it's such a community
feeling when you come here.
It's a neighborhood school.
It's your classic school that kids really want to go to.
In the morning, if you're standing outside before school, you'll see parents walking
with their little ones.
You'll see kids on their scooters, kids on their bike walking with their friends.
Our kids feel safe here.
They feel safe to learn.
Everybody here is nice and friendly and I have a lot of friends here and the teachers are
great.
And we all work together to better the way that they grow.
And then throughout the day, you'll see just the students how they connect with each other.
They all have several siblings and so they know each other and they're on sports teams
together and participate in activities outside of school together.
So you just feel like it's a real family here at Pine Grove.
I think the culture here is very warm and very accepting.
We have great student leadership teams that kind of foster that culture here.
We have a community service team.
They go out in the wider community outside of Pine Grove and do projects.
We have an anti-bullying committee.
We work hard on making sure that each student here feels welcome and accepted.
And as an extension of that, the parents, I believe, do also.
Well, I'm so proud of our staff because this year, together, we created a new mission for
Pine Grove and we came up with Pine Grove Elementary, building the bridge from foundation
to innovation.
Well, teachers work very hard here to keep the students engaged because we all know that
if a student's not engaged, there's no way they're going to learn.
What has the most data?
And I think the kids here at Pine Grove are so fortunate because they get the best of
both worlds.
They get to have strong foundational skills in reading, writing, and math and in the arts.
But then they also get to spend their day with teachers who are committed to allowing
the students to find their own special way.
We do a variety of methods, whatever works with the particular class.
We have a lot of technology engagement tools that we're using, like interactive quizzes
where they can see their responses right away, they can compete, those sort of things.
We kind of go with what works with each individual class.
And that's when we feel like we've done our job because we've really reached every single
student we can because we've provided them with as many opportunities to match their
type of learning, whether it's a kinesthetic or whether it's auditory or visual, whatever
their style might be.
We want to give every student an opportunity to demonstrate what they know and what they
can do.
Awesome.
So here's our energy graph we've been tracking our people on for the classes.
Pine Grove has a very strong green team.
So we're going to check if the computers, lights, and smart boards and projectors off.
We do recycling and energy to save our, or just to make our school a little greener.
They worked on reducing our energy consumption.
So we can give them a check plus on that.
Recycling equipment.
So we're going to check in this room maybe.
We have an electronics recycling drive going on right now.
She has her lights off.
She does not have her computers off.
The kids are all really aware of what they can do to help better the environment.
That's when you play your air guitar.
And then they put everything that they had together to create a really special show.
To raise awareness in the community about, you know, living green and being sustainable.
What better way to teach something than through art, than through music, than through PE.
That's how kids learn best.
It's very important for me to value the arts.
I know that our parent community values the arts as well as our staff.
And so when I'm looking at budget, I always make that a priority.
And as long as our enrollment is strong, we can afford to have all four of the arts because
I think it's just so important for those students to develop all four parts of their
brain that way.
It gives the kids a chance to shine.
That they're a part of the message, but they're relaying it to our community.
They learned it from us and our passion shines through them.
If you come to Pine Grove, you're going to leave Pine Grove as a really well-rounded
student.
And we work very hard to not only achieve our own successes, but to help kids achieve
their successes.
And you're going to understand as a student how all those different components contribute
to you being a productive 21st century learner.
If you just focus at that knowledge level, the learning doesn't really stick with the
kids.
And that's our goal is to make sure that when kids leave, they can remember the most important
concepts in life or those outcomes that we really want them to leave Pine Grove with.
