Golden Apple: Caleb Rowland, Nolan Elementary
Signal Mountain, TN (WDEF) – Caleb Rowland is a young teacher, but he has really hit the ground running at Nolan Elementary. He’s always researching fun projects for his students, and he also heads up the school newspaper. We spend some quality time in Mr. Rowland’s class for this week’s Golden Apple Award.
Ashley Aldridge Wilson is the Principal at Nolan Elementary School
She says, “Mr. Roland comes to work every day just full of excitement and joy for teaching and learning, we are thrilled to have him on our staff. One of the things that impresses me the most is, how he creates interactive lessons for the students. So the kids are always engaged in talking. They’re always engaged in problem solving and they work together.”
When asked to describe himself, Mr. Rowland says, “I’m a new educator here at Nolan. This is my second year here Ah, kinda got thrown into it. But I love working here. I think the kids and the family, administration, are just a great reflection on our Signal Schools and the great people who live up here on Signal Mountain. I come from a line of teachers. My great grandmother’s a teacher, my mom is a teacher. So kind of the natural thing to do once I get to college. Teaching was only option for me.”
4th grader Ryan Aboulfaida says, “I like how he teaches. He makes the teaching interactive with our table. So, so, we can learn better together.”
Fellow student Addy Paschall, “I like Mr. Rowland’s class because whenever we, whatever like at the end of class, we have we have this like, we either have a game or we play this thing called like book it. And we can like, it’s a game and you can also play with it.”
Audrey Eady explains,” Basically if you have someone that lives in the state, or you go there. You can get a state card for any state that’s in the USA. And then once you get one, staple it up there and then shades in the states until we got all the states and now, we have all the states.”
Mr. Rowland says, “I think the projects we do, I think the project-based learning that we do, the hands-on activity, I think that’s what I want them to remember me by.”
4th grader Brennen Cox chips, “He is super fun. I really like… like he does. Last time we got to dissect owl pallet. It was really fun.”
Mr. Rowland concludes, ” I think coming in with the students and the energy they bring to the classroom every day, I think really makes it enjoyable every day coming to school.”
Principal Aldridge Wilson adds, “You can really a sense of joy in his classroom all the time. And the kids are really challenged with content so we appreciate him and his leadership. We’re just very proud of all the, the ways he’s invested in our school.”
