11.Janet Ricard — Direct/Cross (Recall) (Part 2)

JANET RICARD: Yes, ma'am. That was for math and that is the same measure that I spoke of earlier of MAP where it's measured academic progress. And that shows she actually had the highest MAP gain for math as well in first grade.

JANET RICARD: That would have been --

JANET RICARD: Yes, ma'am, the end of her year with Ms. Lee.

JANET RICARD: That was included in our yearbook for the school year 14/15. That was just a tribute to all three of the Jones children that we could include so that all of our students would have a memory of them. It just really kind of reflects each one of them. We didn't -- from what I remember, I don't think we had another photograph of Nahtahn because it was so early in the school year that year. You can see Merah with a very special friend of hers, a child that she enjoyed playing with an awful lot. And then Eli with a classmate, and that was just his personality. He was always explaining something. I'm sure he was telling her all about something. And then I think the little -- the other inset is probably something, a piece of work that Nahtahn had completed and we included since we didn't have another photograph. Just a memory, a tribute to those students in our yearbook so that all of our students could remember them.

JANET RICARD: We did. One of our teachers, Ms. Carolyn Still, who actually taught Eli in kindergarten, she was also a wonderful artist. So it became a goal of ours to create a space in our school where we could memorialize the children. So because they had a great fondness and love for the beach, we decided to go with a beach theme. And she created a mural that pretty much encompassed the entire learning commons throughout especially one unique area. We called it Jones Beach, had a little sign that said Jones Beach, and several other spaces that made it a very comfortable spot for our students to get a book and go read and reflect.

JANET RICARD: That was the sign that Ms. Still created, it just said Welcome to Jones Beach and then it has -- I think it says Seven Habits Lane, if I can read that from here.

JANET RICARD: Well, because we a leader in me school and the seven habits just really drives the culture and the climate at the school. We use seven habits language throughout the day with the students to help them achieve their leadership traits and hopefully push them forward.

JANET RICARD: It's a very sentimental and special quote that Ms. Still chose to include on the wall. And then you can see along the bottom of the wall, along the walkway, there are five sets of footsteps that represent each one of the Jones children.

JANET RICARD: And that's the quote that I was speaking of. It was a quote that we chose to represent the memories that we have of the children.

JANET RICARD: That was one of the areas that we used, just kind of a little reading nook for our students to go in --

JANET RICARD: Yeah, books were purchased and donated in memory of the students so they could go in and climb up in a boat and read books there or sit along the beach and read books.

JANET RICARD: That was another little beachy area. They could climb up in the lifeguard chair and read a book or sit along, again, the ocean area, I guess you would say.

JANET RICARD: They always talked about loving the beach and going to the beach. When the turtle in the pocket incident happened, Eli told me he had got the turtle from the beach. So we just knew they seemed to enjoy going to the beach, so that was why that theme was selected.

JANET RICARD: That particular part of the mural was where we had decided that we would have a space to designate for the children and because we had had such a good memory of Eli and his turtle, we chose turtles to represent the children. So each one of the children were represented with a turtle and Ms. Still named each one of the turtles by one of the children's name.

JANET RICARD: I can't read it from here. My eyes are not that grand, but again, one of the turtles were one of the children.

JANET RICARD: The same.

JANET RICARD: That looks like Nahtahn.

JANET RICARD: Okay. So this was from second grade and this is one of her writings. It says, Once upon a time, there was a little zebra who lived in a beautiful castle. So I feel sure that was just the beginning of one of her writing pieces. And then her third grade year, which was the very beginning of the school year 2014/15, she had a teacher by the name of Ms. Nettles. She had begun a letter to her. It says, Dear Ms. Nettles, I am an intelligent little girl and I am scared of ghosts.

JANET RICARD: So that looks like it was what we called wildly important goals. They had -- we called it their WIG and it was just what they identified as being their goals, academic or personal goals. So you can kind of see what that looked like. And then to show her growth --

JANET RICARD: It says that her wildly important goal was, obviously, to be a ballerina. She said, I like ballet because it is important to me. It's fun.

JANET RICARD: I think you can obviously see that there was great growth in writing, not only in the neatness of it, but in the volume. So for her second grade personal mission statement, which was a part of what they did in their leadership notebooks, it says, I will be a fantastic daughter. I will be a helpful sister. I will be a super student. Everyday I will do my work and make good grades. When I grow up, I want to be a nurse.

JANET RICARD: So her second grade teacher, a lot of what she talked about was how they could fill each other's buckets, saying kind things, being helpful to one another. So she was a bucket filler because she was loving, she was nice, she used nice words, she gave lots of hugs and she was always helping. And that describes her.

JANET RICARD: Most of the time, teachers would have like a first grade booklet or something that they could kind of remember those first few days of school or put together at the end of the year. That looks like it was one that Ms. Lee made that was probably a compilation of work over her first grade year.

JANET RICARD: So that was from the first day of school. She did a picture of each of her children. So that was Merah on her first day of school and then a little poem that went along with it. She included writings.

JANET RICARD: Uh-huh, absolutely.

JANET RICARD: I got to know Eli when he was in kindergarten. He had just a few little hiccups, just little things that we needed to work on behaviorally. He was a special little fellow and really just wanted to please, worked hard to make friends, everybody loved him. We did -- we worked on a few little things. Sometimes he'd put things in his pockets that didn't belong to him, but we always tried to turn those into teachable moments. Whenever he was in first grade, I had begun to do some Read to Succeed course work. So for one of my courses, we were asked to choose a student that would be a focus student. And I knew that was going to be difficult for me being that I was not a classroom teacher, I was an administrator, but I knew I had to fill the requirements. So I went to Ms. Muran, who was his kindergarten teacher. I had spent a lot of time in her classroom that year and I knew that Eli was having some difficulties with his reading. And since I already had such a strong relationship with him and a bond, I thought that he would be a student that I could easily work with because we would already have that rapport with one another. And I also -- I chose him because I knew that he was in a home where there were five children and I felt like he probably did not get as much help at home as he could have and I knew it was a single parent situation as well and that there was no mother in the home. So I had hoped that I could fill a little bit of that material void as well. So he and I worked together that semester. We worked on strategies that he could use in his reading and just try to go look at his reading process, what he was doing well, what he still needed to work on, what his strengths were. It was a wonderful experience and I have precious memories.

JANET RICARD: Yes, ma'am.

JANET RICARD: Yes, ma'am.

JANET RICARD: Ms. Muran was first grade, yes, ma'am.

JANET RICARD: I did. And that was part of what the course work required. Multiple times, I had to remove him from the classroom and we would go either out into the hallway or sometimes to my office or to another space just so we could have some quiet workspace. And he would sometimes choose books to bring to read. Sometimes it might be a situation where I just asked him questions about reading and about how he felt about reading, if he thought he was a good reader. So, really, just taking the time to get to know him as a reader and where he was in his reading process and how he was developing as a reader. And I got to know a lot about him personally, too.

JANET RICARD: Oh, he loved it. He looked forward to it. And it was -- he always lit up when I would come to the door to get him. We both looked forward to it. (WHEREUPON, video played for the jury starting at 3:00 p.m. and ended at 3:05 p.m.)

JANET RICARD: Yes.

JANET RICARD: They still impact me.

JANET RICARD: Yes, this was in Fran's classroom whenever Merah was in first grade. And then this would have been -- this was actually right out at the crosswalk. I'm assuming that would have been when Nahtahn was in kindergarten, but I'm not positive. But they were, obviously, already in school. That's Nahtahn and Mr. Jones. That would have been at a school function, obviously, around Thanksgiving. They always do the Thanksgiving play, so that would have been kindergarten year. And then this -- this could have been a family night. I'm not positive. It looks like it was in Ms. Muran's room, so it would have been when -- it would have been when Eli was in first grade. I recognize some of the other students, so that would have been first grade year for Eli.

JANET RICARD: That was Ms. Lee with Merah, so that would have been at some point during Merah's first grade year.

JANET RICARD: Right, right at the front of the school. And like I said, it's either Nahtahn's kindergarten year or may have been prior to him being in kindergarten. That one's a little bit difficult for me to tell as far as his age.

JANET RICARD: That is Mr. Jones and Nahtahn. And that would have been Nahtahn's kindergarten year. The little turkey hats, kind of a give away. They always did a kindergarten play.

JANET RICARD: That looks like it's Ms. Muran's classroom. And like I said, I recognize some of the other folks and students in there. I'm not sure if that was some type of family night, but that was in Eli's first grade year.