A child’s mind is like a sponge, soaking up drops of colors, words and numbers daily. But with the growing short attention span and different learning styles of children, teachers can no longer tell a child to just pick up a pencil and write a sentence.

Every day is show and tell day in a classroom. Teachers constantly show children to use adjectives to describe a hamburger, count to three by adding the number of blocks sitting on a desk or sound out words as children read aloud before telling them to complete the same task on their own.

Lessons that appeal to students by hearing the information, seeing the lesson on a dry erase board and creating an object to illustrate the task take careful planning.

That is why more than 20 teachers in the Selma City Schools are spending two weeks at Knox Elementary’s Innovative Academy summer program observing each other and bouncing around ideas to create better lessons.

Learning is not just for students. For as long as children will learn in school, teachers will learn new ways to make a lesson more interesting so all children will pay utter attention.

Through the system-wide planning, teachers have a community of peers with innovative ideas to implement skills, leaning on one another to make the schools stronger.

Hands-on seminars like this will ensure that every child, no matter which elementary school, will have the best education possible.

The best is what parents want for their children, and the best is what Selma City Schools teachers will give them.