Penn Hills kindergarten teachers visit homes of new students for nontraditional orientation
Necessity might be the mother of all invention but covid-19 is the crazy uncle.
The pandemic has disrupted traditions and plans — kindergarten orientation being one of them. But at Penn Hills Elementary School, teachers and staff figured out a way to do it a bit differently.
Instead of new students coming to the school all at once, teachers went to them. They split into two groups and spent an entire day recently visiting all 54 new kindergarten families in Penn Hills and giving each student a gift bag and a covid-friendly greeting.
“This is super cool,” said Parker Streiff.
The 5-year-old had just been given a gift bag filled with a stuffed bee, a T-shirt and other gifts. His kindergarten teachers welcomed him with fist bumps and smiley-squinty eyes.
He said he was excited for reading, gym class and recess. His parents, Angela and Mike, were appreciative of the visit as the teachers headed to the next house.
“We’re taking the school bus around the neighborhoods, just giving them an opportunity to meet us, to help ease their anxiety for next year. We’re having a good old time, seeing a lot of smiling faces out there,” said Rusty Brown, the elementary school’s behavior management specialist.
Typically, he said, new kindergarten students and their families visit the school to get oriented and meet teachers, get a tour of the building. But the pandemic has flipped that tradition upside down.
One girl, Phaedra McCaughy, 4, was so excited to see her future teachers that she invited them inside to play in her room with the new stuffed bee she had just taken out of the gift bag.
“Oh, I don’t think we’ll all fit in there,” said one teacher, laughing. The group then posed for a photo behind one of the yard signs teachers left behind at each house. The signs read: “I’m ready for kindergarten at Penn Hills Elementary School.”
Kristin Brown, the elementary school’s principal, said she was excited to be able to do kindergarten orientation in this way.
“We’ve wanted to do something like this for a while,” she said, adding the kindergarten transition team got the idea to use a school bus to visit families when high school teachers used a bus to visit graduating seniors over a weekend last year.
Brown said she’s been getting emails and messages from parents about how wonderful the event went.
“And we’re actually going out again next week because we couldn’t get to all 54 families,” she said.
Parents had questions during the visit about the incoming school year and what it might look like.
“We just went with the flow,” she said. “And really, we don’t know what things will look like in the fall in terms of what school days will look like.”
The principal said other activities throughout the summer to help families get acquainted with teachers and the school building will hopefully happen.
Currently, students have the option for virtual learning or in-person schooling for four days a week at the district. Wednesdays are designated for virtual learning to allow officials to clean and sanitize buildings.
Brown said the elementary school kindergarten program experienced record lows in enrollment last year.
“I blame covid-19,” she said. “Parents didn’t want to send their children during a pandemic.”
The 54 families who have registered so far for kindergarten is a number that still falls below the average. Brown said she is hoping the children who didn’t get signed up last year will enroll as school operations slowly return to normal.
Registration for kindergarten opens in February. Typically around this time, there are around 90 families already registered, she said.
Registration for kindergarten does not close, Brown said. But early registration helps teachers and staff plan for the year ahead.
“So it’s really important we know who’s coming in the doors in the fall,” she said. “It also helps parents ask the questions they want to ask so everyone is good to go.”
For more information on enrollment, call the elementary school at 412-793-7000.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.