Charleston Memories

Our much anticipated fieldtrip to Charleston, SC has come and gone, but I am sure the memories will last forever.

  My love for sea turtles sparked after reading The Beach House by Mary Alice Monroe several years ago. The author is an environmentalist from Charleston with a passion for our state reptile, the loggerhead sea turtle. In her series, she writes about the sea turtle hospital. Of course, it has been on my 'bucket list' ever since. I could not have chosen a better group of students to learn along side as we researched and raised money for these gentle giants. Meeting Yawkey, the rare leatherback, was a once in a lifetime opportunity. She was released soon after we left that day. I think she arrived and departed just in the right time frame for us to meet her, and we are so glad we did! 

We hope our contributions to the sea turtle hospital will help heal these sweet loggerheads pictured below. 

    My husband and I visited Boone Hall Plantation the day after we were married in Charleston. This place has a special place in my heart. I was excited to return nearly 7 years later with 20 children that have completely stolen my heart. I am so thankful for their eagerness to learn each day.

Boone Hall served as our kick off for our next inquiry based unit on the Civil War.  Stay tuned to learn more! I am really excited about our upcoming unit! 

To read more Charleston Memories from our amazing group of authors, click on our Kid Blog link! They are thrilled to expand their audience outside of our classroom and across the world. 

Save the Turtles Ornament- Get Yours Today!

I'm not sure about you, but the children behind these sweet faces continue to amaze me more each day. They have so selflessly given their time, research, and now crafting skills to help raise awareness of one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. Our amazing students are working on ornaments to sell, with all the proceeds being donated to The South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Rescue. Pretty amazing, right?!?

Our ornaments are in high demand not only in our school, but across the nation! We want to give special thanks to New York Times Best Selling Author and environmentalist, Mary Alice Monroe. She highlighted our ornaments and our students efforts on her personal Facebook page. The teachers and administration are working together to create an online ordering system available to the public soon. As for now, every third grader at OES is creating ornaments.


Oakland Elementary is an All*Star school because we seek to teach the whole child. Our curriculum goes far beyond the standards. We instill the importance of confidence and know that  FAILure is First Attempts at Learning. We strive to instill a love for learning and passion for people, animals, and nature. Every child has a name, a heart, a body, and a mind, and as we teach, we honor the whole child. We are proud of our test scores, but the numbers cannot compare to the happiness in the faces you see below.
Click the links to read a few of our students' personal blog posts:
William's Blog
Breanna's Blog

Today, and everyday, I am proud to be an Oakland All*Star!