“I said to my teacher in fifth grade, I said, there’s just something about what you do I just absolutely love,” said Darcie Lewis, Kindergarten teacher at Farwell elementary.
Darcie Lewis has been a kindergarten teacher at Farwell Elementary for 29 years. Her passion for teaching comes from seeing the growth in her students from the first day of school to the last.
“Five-year-olds change so much. It’s so rewarding on a day-to-day basis. I get, everybody gets frustrated, and you think, oh, I’m not doing enough. And the curriculum weighs you down. But then you see their shining faces and they start to talk about how I went home last night, and I read this book to my mom and dad, or I saw the sign and things like that, and then at the end of the year to see how much they’ve changed and matured and the things that they can do,” said Lewis.
Darcie says a large portion of the money will be put towards furthering her students fine motor and critical thinking skills.
“My major thing that I want to do is, we have iPads in our classroom, so I have a program that’s called Osmo that the kids like to play on it, and there’s some extra components to it that I would like to get that are expensive. And that’s not something that I normally want to just spend out of my pocket. So, I think that’s going to take probably half the money to do that. And then probably the other half I’m thinking about maybe getting some more hands on, manipulative type things,” Lewis said.
She says, winning this giveaway was incredibly humbling.
“The whole purpose of this giveaway was to say thank you to teachers. And it can be a thankless job sometimes. So being thanked like this is like, even if it was only $5, it’s like, hey, it’s $5 to say thank you. We know what, we know how much you do,” said Darcie.
And Mrs. Lewis’, students think she’s pretty extraordinary. Her Kindergarteners have the perfect words to describe her...
“Smart!”
“I love her.”
“She’s my favorite teacher.”
