Honestly, my first thought is where do I begin and how can I put into words what this teacher has done for my son and our family. Ms. Atteberry is my son's Kindergarten teacher, and to say she is amazing a her job is an understatement. Blake is the youngest of three; he has two older sisters who definitely do not make things easy for him. Blake is our "covid baby" because he was born about a month before the world shut down, and so he did not have the same exposures and early childcare experiences my daughters had when they were young. When it came time for Blake to go to Kindergarten I was nervous because he is my youngest and how do I know if we were choosing the right school (which was a different school than his sisters went to). Neither of my girls had a good Kindergarten experience. I am all for supporting teachers; however, teaching is not for everyone and I will leave it at that. Right form the beginning, Ms. Atteberry was enthusiastic, warm and welcoming to all students and parents. She went out of her way to personally welcome each student and took time to meet each family, ask & answer questions, and tell us a little bit about herself. This all sounded great and we thought well it's the beginning of the school year so this is normal. The thing is though....we are now almost to the end of the school year and none of that has changed. Ms. Atteberry still sends home random "mail" with Blake highlighting something he did that day. Whether it was being a kind friend or one of our favorites which was "Blake answered some really hard questions today", and she listed the questions on the back of the card...which had to do with a reading comprehension activity they did in class. She makes Blake feel special, like he is the best student in her class...he will even tell us that he is!! Blake has learned SO much this year in her class, and of course he loves going to school because he has fun and is constantly engaged. His math skills have blown us away! He is 6 years old and can do double digit addition problems, subtraction problems, mastered the multiplication times table, and is now working on "dividing" facts as he calls them. Ms. Atteberry could easily just praise Blake for being good in math and leave it at that, but she went above and beyond by creating a special math folder just for Blake which included math worksheets that had all kinds of double digit addition/subtraction problems, multiplication problems, etc. Blake was thrilled to bring this folder home and I actually took a picture of him working on it in the car that day after school. A few months ago, she made Blake his own special "word" book journal which was a just a composition notebook with his picture on it. Once he started learning how to spell and read simple words, he wanted to write down EVERYTHING. To support/encourage his excitement, Ms. Atteberry made him that journal so even at home, he had a special place to write down whatever he wanted. Recently, we were at the store and Blake asked if we could get some cat treats for Junie B. Jones. My first thought was why is Blake asking to buy cat treats for a book character, and how does he even know about those books. Well, come to find out Ms. Atteberry has a cat named Junie B. Jones and she had an automatic treat dispenser (with a camera) in her house. Allowing students to "give" her cat a treat is sometimes a reward students can earn in her classroom I guess. This is one of the highlights of Blake's day when this happens! I mention this in my story because it just goes to show the type of person Ms. Atteberry is, and how she is always dressing up in different characters, themes, or doing whatever it takes to make learning fun and engaging. As a parent, I want to believe that she thinks my son is just amazing and gives him all of this special treatment! However, I now realize and can see this is who she is as a person and she treats all of her students this way and makes each child feel like they are the best student in her class and she is so lucky to be their teacher. What more can a parent ask for? We are so fortunate that Blake has had Ms. Atteberry as his "first" elementary school teacher! I must say, she has set the bar really high for all of his future teachers to come. Thank you Ms. Atteberry for everything!