Spectrum 2020: Together From a Distance

Spectrum

The Peck School

2020

'Together From a Distance'

The Peck School

Illustration by Grayson

Teachers in the primary grades establish the foundation for a child’s learning experience. It takes a patient, creative, loving person who can reach students in a way that will help them embrace and develop new skills, and make memories that endure forever. This year, Spectrum honors a teacher who has touched the lives of many students over the years.

Jeannie Brown has been guiding first graders for twenty-one years, but as Miss Stangel, she started her Peck career in second grade in 1979. Five years later, she became a third grade teacher with Barry Brown as her partner. That partnership became one of a lifetime when she and Mr. Brown married at the end of that school year! After a brief departure from Peck and New Jersey, the Browns returned with their three children, Eoin, Gareth, and Kelsey, all graduates of The Peck School.

Students of Mrs. Brown know that her favorite color is brown, she loves the Peanuts gang, especially Charlie Brown, and she makes delicious brownies. Do you see a theme here? She loves the earth and teaches her students the importance of conserving and caring for their environment [beginning with their collection of compostable matter at lunch to feed the earthworms for the garden.]

Ending her career at Peck with distance teaching is not the way she, or her students and colleagues, would choose to say good-bye. There should be hugs and shared memories, and the special get-togethers. However, 2020 has become quite a challenging and unusual year for all. Mrs. Brown, we dedicate this year’s very special digital Spectrum to you and wish you good health and great new experiences. We honor your devotion to the many children whose lives you have touched. You will always be in our hearts!

Illustration by Ashlyn

John, Ella, & Family

When life gives you lemons, our family makes lemonade. We have taken the quarantine very seriously, and tried to make the best of the situation. We started off our quarantine with adding a new member to our family. We got another Frenchie named Meatball. Our dogs love to sit on our laps and take classes with us. We are enjoying all the extra time we get to spend with our dogs Lola and Meatball. We also enjoy playing corn hole on our front lawn, soccer, and Spikeball as a family. My mom gets to play teacher with Ella and my dad helps me stay on top of my school work. Michael taught his advisory how to make homemade French Toast during his Zoom class. It's funny to have Zoom parties and Ella loves our dance parties. Ella and my mom end everyday with sharing each others' rose and thorn for that day. We get so many more home cooked meals since we are not running to all of our activities. We get to see my dad so much more because he is working from home. We all miss seeing our friends and teachers in person, but we value the time we get to spend as a family. We are grateful for our teachers and all their hard work that they have put into making this homeschool experience so enjoyable!

Constanza, Julieta, Matias, & Family

While distance learning, we have been going outside and enjoying the time to spend with our family. We have also developed a new hobby which is playing the piano. We also have been spending more time eating as a family because when we return to school we will not have as much time to eat together. We also like watching movies together and bike riding outside. Even though we can’t see our friends on campus we still love to see them over Zoom.

Pierce & Family

Our family is so much fun and we love to hang around with each other. We are good at games. We read books to each other. We build Legos with each other, we love Legos so much. We love arts and crafts. We are good at card games. We love baking together. We love to do puzzles with 1,000 pieces. When we get to go outside, we like to scoot. We are trying to learn how to ride bikes. Our driveway is getting repaved so it will be smooth to scoot on. We like to hit golf balls into a big net in our backyard. We are having fun in our pool. We planted flowers in our front yard. We are so happy that we are safe and love to write notes to our friends to see how they're doing. We miss school a lot!