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Kohl McCormick Early Childhood Teaching Awards
Marisol Sierra
McKinley Park Elementary
Chicago, IL
Preschool For All
When it comes to preventing violence in her neighborhood, Marisol Sierra turns to the children. Instead of petitioning the government or taking to the streets, she works with her Preschool For All students to prevent aggressive behavior before it begins. Teaching her students from a kid-friendly model neighborhood within her classroom walls, Marisol is developing in her children such lifelong values of cooperation and respect, and parents and teachers are coming from miles around to see how she does it.
Convinced that her 3- to 5-year-olds are old enough to acknowledge neighborhood violence, Marisol has developed a dialogue with them about peaceful behavior. “We talk about gangs and guns and hurtful words,” she says. “We talk about what guns do and how they hurt people. Then the children make connections between what they’ve learned and the gangs in their neighborhoods.” This connection involves a promise – to each other as well as their teacher – that they will only accept and encourage friendly behavior where they live. Acting like the mature and independent thinkers they are, Marisol’s Preschool For All students sign their names to an anti-violence contract. No disagreement will ever trouble their model community.
The children practice this maturity directly in their classroom – literally a model town built inside McKinley Park Elementary. Every day, Marisol and her students move about together through various stations – a doctor’s office with a reception area, a house with a kitchen, or a classroom library – making appointments and running errands as they wish. Marisol participates actively, complaining of a sore throat to the “doctor,” and then taking her vitamins in the kitchen. Her young students adapt to new stations every day, circulating the room as independent adventurers, and they’re constantly careful of others. “Even though they are anxious to be involved in specific learning centers,” notes Mildred Ebietomiye, Director of Education for the Dolores Kohl Education Foundation, “they still take their turns and don’t jockey for positions as young ones sometimes do. They honor their class rules and routines and function well independently.” In Marisol’s classroom, they practice what they preach.
Her accomplishments are so remarkable, in fact, that CPS chose her classroom as a “model” preschool program, publishing several pictures in the 2006-2007 Virtual Pre-K Program book, and sending other teachers to view the room so they can bring some of the same elements to their classes. She has also received plenty of recognition herself. Frances Garcia, McKinley Park Elementary principal, explains that Marisol holds several appointed and elected leadership positions, and calls her a mentor. “Many of the staff members and I look to her as a role model.” She enjoys one-hundred percent parent volunteerism, no doubt because parents and teachers alike are eager to join her model community.
Just as impressive as the ideal world she’s made of her classroom, Marisol Sierra is fighting violence with the smallest of her neighbors, and gaining new followers every day. “Marisol is as much a model as her extraordinary classroom,” Mildred concludes about this outstanding educator. “Any teacher should be just as thrilled as her students to learn from her.”
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