1st day success for Gandy Elementary
Excitement abounded among students Monday on their first day of the new school year at Gandy Elementary in the White Hall School District, according to its new principal.
Lakendra Lovelady, a kindergarten-through-fourth grade teacher by background, has settled into the role after spending the past two years as assistant principal at White Hall Middle School.
“It’s been pretty good,” Lovelady said Monday. “This morning, we had our rush of kids coming in. The parents came in. Everybody was excited. We got everybody where they needed to be, and really the day has been going by pretty fast.”
Gandy is one of four elementary schools in the district that serve students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
Getting into the routine and doing things helped the day flow well, Lovelady said. Bus routes to Gandy went smoothly for the students, she reported, but staff were also taking precautions to make sure young students were tagged with their addresses and phone numbers for safe rides home.
As for the usual tears for fears of school from first-time learners, Lovelady said she only had to calm two students down.
“That was awesome for me because I just knew we were going to have a lot of kids crying,” she said. “It’s their first time coming to school. I think we had more parents crying, actually. A lot of parents and grandparents came out teary-eyed. I said, ‘It’s going to be all right. We’re going to take care of your babies.’”
Some of the older students’ familiarity with Lovelady helped connect their younger siblings to their new principal.
Teachers also modeled correct and incorrect behaviors of classroom learning in a video, which Lovelady said the students enjoyed as they saw their instructors in another light.
“It was like, ‘Those teachers are wild! Did you see it, Mrs. Lovelady?’” she said.
Lovelady and staff are also implementing Capturing Kids’ Hearts, a program that focuses on promoting safe, positive climates within schools in hopes of increasing attendance and boosting student achievement while reducing discipline referrals. The staff learned about Capturing Kids’ Hearts during training in the past two weeks.
In Samantha Terry’s sec
ond-grade classroom, the first day was what she called a calm experience.
“They came in very excited, very happy, very talkative. But we calmed ourselves down and we were able to get school supplies taken care of, folders put away, trying to get a routine,” Terry said. “Each day, we’ll get better.”
Terry credited her students with knowing their numbers — in other words, lining up from the door when their number is called so there is no fighting over who’s in front.
Hayes, a second grader, said he enjoyed his teachers and principal the most about his first day. He said Lovelady is “very nice and happy.”
“Why, thank you, Hayes,” Lovelady responded.
Another thing Hayes likes about Gandy is that it “doesn’t have any bullying in it or any of that mean stuff.” That’s also important to kindergartner Eli.
“I really like the PlayDoh,” Eli said. “Just writing my name and I made Orange the Rainbow Friend.”
“Rainbow Friends” is an online video game on the Roblox system.
Tristan, a fellow kindergartner, also had a fun time with Play-Doh and read three books. He also had three recesses.
With the Play-Doh, he said: “We made a crown.”