It is amazing of how many young students and their families have come to this school in the past four decades. Many of our students are children of past students, and soon we will have the third generation attending. Yet one of the greatest things is that RLC Preschool reflects the changing diversity of the surrounding community, and opens their arms to everyone with dignity and grace.

Did you know for the 2018-19 school year we have had seven other languages, besides English that were spoken by students? These languages include: Amharic, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Oromo, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Several of the English Language Learners (ELL) never spoke English before they attended our preschool. Our teachers are amazing and have done wonders at providing visuals, simple phrases, and individualized experiences for them to excel not only at learning English, but learning preschool concepts in general. Most ELL students go through four phases of communication before they can speak it fluently which includes: (1) Native Language Stage (speaking their language and recognizing their culture); (2) Non-verbal Stage (recognizing and pointing to familiar objects); (3) Short Phrases Stage (saying single words or phrases); (4) Oral Production Stage (speaking sentences and understanding what others say). Ms. Jen, the Preschool Director, most recently completed her Masters of Educational Leadership and did her action research project on “The Impact of How Teaching Strategies Affect the Relationship Between Preschool ELL Students and Preschool Teachers.”  Ms. Jen found that RLC Preschool Teachers use many teaching strategies that benefit the relationship between the student and the teacher. There are some teaching strategies they can still learn more about to provide additional support in the future, and plan to do at staff development. However, the greater finding in the research was that the teachers not only built relationships with the students, they built strong relationships with the family as a whole. Another way RLC Preschool has lived out the current mission of “Love God. Love Your Neighbor,” and the vision “A Community United by Grace.”