Thursday, April 17, 2025 was an especially magical day at Mitchell Elementary.
Our students enjoyed three field trips and a spring celebration. Each year, one of our second-grade teachers, Ms. Fecteau, organizes a field trip so students can have the opportunity to plant a tree at Whalen Field across the street from Mitchell. She says this tradition is especially important to her because she hears from her students who have moved on to the upper grades that they like to visit the tree that they helped plant. This is an opportunity for our students to see how beginning with the end in mind can create long-term benefits for our community.
Mr. Hallam, our music teacher, provided another opportunity for our second-grade students on that same Thursday. He worked with other elementary schools and the district to have our students participate in a music festival. During class, our second-grade students learned to perform the three songs that they sang at Long Elementary in Las Vegas. They were the only second-grade choir at the performance as the other choirs consisted mostly of third, fourth, and fifth grade students. They represented our school, our community, and themselves beautifully in their performance. Their leadership was evident as they demonstrated win-win thinking as they handled with ease and patience arriving late due to transportation issues and going to a school that they had never been to before. The second-grade teachers and our parent-volunteer chaperones managed everything perfectly so that our students could shine.
On that same fine day, one of our first-grade classes continued with their grade-level field trip tradition of walking to Ruben’s here in Boulder City where they discover the joy of wooden toys. Once again, the teachers, parent-volunteer chaperones, and our community synergized to create these moments of learning and engagement. Our students were proactive as they decided to show their leadership skills and respect for our community and a local business.
The Mitchell PAC continued celebrating with the Spring Egg Hunt that afternoon. They had been working behind the scenes, as they so often do, to ensure that 5,000 eggs were available for our students to hunt, open to find a treat, and then return so students can enjoy the same tradition again next year. These amazing parent volunteers braved wind and rain and more wind to ensure that our students could create this springtime memory. Each class of students were amazing as they sought first to understand by listening to the teachers and volunteers so they could successfully find their eggs and help organize the eggs for the PAC to fill next year.
At the end of the day our families, as always, were waiting outside the classroom doors in the shade of our trees, for their smiling children who had had another great day of learning and leading. In the coming weeks, our students will get a chance to show us how much they have learned this year in reading and math. On that magical Thursday, they showed us how much they have learned as leaders.