No, the freshmen aren’t that short. If you have seen a crew of what appear to be preschoolers walking through the halls, you would be correct: we have has our own preschool.

The program, Spartan Sprouts, is run by family and consumer science teacher Robin Griffin and her Early Childhood Careers students. For the high schoolers, it’s a role reversal: from 10 am to 12:30 pm, they become the teachers.

“I make lessons for the preschoolers, and I teach them, and I overlook all of my younger student teachers, and I help them plan lessons and help them learn,” said senior Danielle Parton. She joined Spartan Sprouts after a friend took the class and highly recommended it.

“So I took it, and I really want to be a preschool teacher now,” Parton said.

Junior Maddie Borlik also heard about the class from her friends.

“It sounded really fun because I like little kids, so I wanted to take it,” Borlik said. Her responsibilities include planning lessons–in both academic subjects and art. Fall art projects included painting leaves and making pumpkin masks. Of course, as they plan, the student teachers must constantly keep their pupils’ ages in mind.

“It’s toned down for preschoolers,” Borlik said. “Language arts would be reading a book, science would be learning about leaves, and math would be counting things.”

The preschoolers, however, are not the only ones who learn. The high schoolers gain knowledge and skills as they teach.

“I’ve learned to build a relationship with the kids,” said senior Laura Diaz. “I’ve learned how there’s different techniques in teaching them. There are different ways they listen and participate in the different lessons that we do.”

Senior Sophia Bailey also gained valuable knowledge about teaching methods and the best ways to work within a group.

“[I have learned] how kids work, how to teach them new things, how to work with others,” Bailey said. “I feel like that’s a big part of it, because you have fifteen other people you have to collaborate with on a constant basis.”

Such collaboration has led to a rewarding payoff: lessons that are fun for both students and student teachers.

“Last year, we all did a couple lessons with a parachute, like you did in elementary school, and that’s the preschoolers’ favorite thing to do, so watching them get to do that is really cool,” Bailey said.

Yet for many of the student teachers, the most enjoyable day occurs when the preschool takes a field trip to Cox Farms.

“My favorite experience is going to Cox Farms with them and down on all the slides, going on the hayride with them. Just watching them enjoy themselves,” Parton said.