Ashoka
Cottonwood Creek Elementary
While we believe that nurturing a child’s academic needs is our prioritynurturing the passions, loves, and dreams of a child is truly life altering. Our learners strive for more, make connections with the world around them, and push themselves to be autonomous individuals because they are passionate about what they are doing. At Cottonwood Creek, we empower learners to be leaders in their world as we design opportunities for creative thinking, problem solving, and life-skills. Our staff and learners pursue possibilities and expand our vision as we rethink and transform education. Each day of school for our learners at CCE is an adventure!
Andra Penny
As for her personal growth, Andra taught kindergarten for a long time. “Everything I learned I learned in kindergarten” rings true for her. Andra really realized that the way kids learn is by talking, making mistakes and even developing their passions, relationships, and interests. To do this, students must have a partnership with a teacher that has empathy for them. There are many elements of making that possible, and a lot of it comes from building a school’s staff team. The interviews for staff here are a conversation and she wants to know about them, how do they handle stress, what does working late mean to them, how do they handle different situations, etc. You can teach people to teach math, but you cannot teach adults to be empathic as easily. Andra wants people who have already mastered that already. Teachers have a lot of input in what Cottonwood Creek Elementary does, because she is not in the classrooms day in and day out. Cottonwood Creek Elementary have first year teachers, veteran teachers, male, female, etc. They genuinely care for each other and love each other. Cottonwood Creek has a family environment.