Ms. S - Preschool
Ms. S. is so excited to be returning to CKP this year, moving from a parent assistant role to lead teacher! She has been an elementary educator for more than a decade. Ms. S. studied anthropology and psychology during her undergraduate years, then earned her MA in Elementary Education from Roosevelt University in Chicago, IL. Twelve years later, she’s happy to say her teaching experience has been incredibly diverse.
Ms. S. has taken on both part-time and full-time teaching roles for grades from kindergarten to 6th. She has worked in private, charter, and public schools, spending half of her teaching career in gifted and talented classrooms. Ms. S. returned to the PNW in 2020 and took some time off from classroom teaching, working mostly as a part-time online math tutor. She most recently worked as an assistant teacher for kindergarten and first grade at The Gardner School of Arts & Sciences in Vancouver.
Ms. S. enjoys collecting sea turtles of all shapes, sizes, and forms. She also enjoys playing the piano poorly and the acoustic guitar even more poorly, with hopes of one day learning to play the cello only somewhat poorly. A lifelong reader and writer, one of her dreams is to become a published author. Ms. S. is looking forward to a fantastic year learning and growing with our CKP community!
Janine Carr - Sprouting Seeds
Janine has been an elementary teacher for 37 years and has also worked with teachers on early literacy projects. She is K-8 certified in the State of Washington with a K-12 reading endorsement, has a Master's Degree in Language & Literacy, and is the author of A Child Went Forth: Reflective Teaching with Young Readers and Writers which is an account of her philosophy and practices from her years in public school teaching. Her expertise is in the field of literacy and she enjoys the many ways of helping children become thoughtful and proficient readers and writers.
Her husband Michael is also a teacher, and her grown children, Matthew and Anna were both part of the Sprouting Seeds program throughout their elementary years.
Virginia Triplett - Sprouting Seeds
Virginia Triplett has been a teacher at Columbia Kids and Sprouting Seeds for more than 40 years.
Hundreds of families have benefited from her guidance and support in the challenging, rewarding, but not always intuitive work of raising creative, curious, responsible citizens.
Virgina has three adult children and a dozen or so other “kids” — the goats she raises on her small farm in Hockinson, Washington.
Virginia worked in her position as our beloved Columbia Kids Preschool teacher and Clark College-affiliated parent educator for 40 years. Literally hundreds of families benefited from Virginia’s invaluable guidance and support in the essential work of raising responsible, creative citizens of all ages. In our Sprouting Seeds School world, Virginia continues to lead the sustained project stand throughout each of our studies where she involves our kids in a variety of ongoing unit-related projects that involve thoughtful, creative processes as well as all five senses as they complete their work together. She also facilitates our parent education discussions as we all embrace the thoughtful work of parenting strong, healthy children who are moving forward in our modern, complex world.