Last week we were honored to host University of Rochester president, Sarah Mangelsdorf, for her visit to see the program in action! Mangelsdorf is an internationally known professor of psychology, especially for her research on the social and emotional development of infants and young children, things we definitely care about here at Horizons at Warner.
Our director Julia Postler took her on a tour of a few of our classrooms, which are divided by grade level, to talk to students and see what they were working on and learning. In our 6th grade room lead teacher Amy Vaughn was working with her “Inventions” theme group on creating their own games.
Outside the 4th grade room they stopped to admire the work of photography club posted around their door outside. They had a lot of fun and creative exploration of perspective!
In our 2nd grade room, lead teacher Jon Hardy explained a book his kids had done a writing project on called “The Flotsam” by David Weisner. It is a wordless story book about a boy who discovered a film camera washed up on the beach. In this activity our students were asked to use their imaginations and senses to describe the scenes, really expanding their vocabulary!
It was a joy to watch president Mangelsdorf engaging with our students and getting a real kick out of their creativity and thoughtfulness. We were glad to have her!