Rapides Parish Educators Receive Gifts in Honor of Teacher Appreciation Week

For Teacher Appreciation Week, the Rapides Parish School Board is recognizing teachers for all the hard work they do.

ABC News Reporter Keisha Swafford has the story on how a local market showed their appreciation to educators.

 

Mac’s Fresh Market gave teachers a surprise gift when they arrived at school.

Peabody Montessori Teacher Ashley Pierce says, “It feels great to be recognized by the district but also outside stakeholders such as Mac’s. That was really nice for them to show up for us.”

 

12 schools were given tumblers as a thank you for all their work.

Peabody Montessori Teacher Esther Hill says, “May is a busy time of the year, it’s really stressful for a lot of the teachers with standardized tests and programs and it’s just so great for our district, PTO, parents, to give us just a little pat on the back and say, ‘We appreciate you’ because it really does mean so much.”

 

News Reporter Keisha Swafford says, “And we have a student here, Alex Turner. He loves his teachers, and we just want to know, why is it important to appreciate teachers?”

Turner says, “I think it would be important to appreciate a teacher because they do a lot for students. You know, my teacher Mrs. Ashley Pierce, she teaches fifth grade math and it’s an important life skill to learn math, you know and it’s just always fun to like, get to see your teacher every day and like, make jokes and just learn and have fun.”

 

Every teacher engages, empowers, and elevates students.

Peabody Montessori Teacher Kimberly Ward says, “I love that this is what I’ve done for 18 years and it’s exciting to see kids grow especially with social media, I get to see kids go through their journey of life and kids that I’ve taught previously are now getting married and some of them are actually having babies so it just makes me really happy to know that I’ve had some sort of impact in their life, in their journey this far.

 

Kimberly Ward says she loves to teach third grade.

Her student Emma Kelso says, “She is a really nice person and she’s sweet to us, she lets us go on lot of field trips, she lets us play outside, she lets us play on our computers, and she’s just a really nice teacher to me.”

 

School administrators hand-delivered tumblers to all teachers and staff.

Horseshoe Drive Elementary Teacher Torra Mobbs says, “I just really love being able to help all of the students achieve all of their goals, giving them that extra love and support that they need every day because it’s very important that we give them the love and support that some of them may not have. It really takes them a long way.”

 

The school board will be traveling to every school to give teachers tokens of appreciation.