Students take over Florence school for an hour

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) - As the last of the students trickled into the school on a recent morning, several members of Lester Elementary School’s student body were gearing up for Turn Around Day. The annual event gives students a chance to see what it is like on the other side of the desk, taking on various staff and faculty jobs around the school for an hour.

Principal Gregory Mingo said that the Florence school continues to hold the event because it gives students a chance to learn a small part of the job of the school’s employees.

“We do it to give them a chance to see what we do,” Mingo said. “It is an annual event and we usually have a lot of interest from students, especially the Student Council.”

For his hour, Student Council President Christian Montemurro was given the task of being principal. Montemurro said that he was excited to take on the responsibility.

“I’ve never done it (been principal) before,” Montemurro said. “I’m going to be doing the announcements.”

Walking around the school with Principal Mingo, Montemurro also checked in on several classrooms, including his own homeroom, seeing what students were working on. When asked by a teacher what he hoped to do during his time as principal Montemurro said that he wanted earlier lunches and a longer recess time.

Student “staff” members were also hard at work in the library. Rakayah Evans and Shamorel Moore put labels on books before they were shelved. Moore said that he was interested in doing Turn Around Day because he wanted to help his school.

“I wanted to help Reading Renaissance,” Moore said.

Reading Renaissance is a program at Lester that rewards students for their progress in learning to read. The labels Evans and Moore were applying will help students locate books on their reading levels.

Susie Brown , Lester Elementary Guidance Counselor, said that students enjoy the chance to tackle an adult job around the school and often are aware of the schedule that the staff follows, falling right into it on Turn Around Day.

“It is really neat when the kids know the routine,” Brown said. “They get to do the lunch count, the roll, and the little routines that they’ve learned. Some do it in their own classroom and some do it with teachers that they had two or three years ago. They get to experience different things for a little while.”

Some of the responsibilities that students took over included, giving the morning announcements, supervising other students doing work in their classrooms and in the library and checking the numbers for lunchtime in the cafeteria.

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Information from: Morning News, https://www.scnow.com