March 28, 2024

Murray’s Feehan wins national contest for children’s books

Editor's note: This was a story originally run the Creston News Advertiser's March Progress issues and requested to run in the Osceola Sentinel-Tribune.

MURRAY — Stacey Feehan, a preschool teacher at Murray School District, has an eye out for new and exciting things to incorporate into the classroom.

Feehan said she has always liked working with young children.

Feehan went to college straight out of high school and originally thought she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. She student taught preschool, kindergarten and second grade. Feehan was offered a mid-year position with Headstart in Osceola as a maternity substitute. She ended up staying with Headstart for almost 10 years.

“They (Murray) got word from the state of Iowa that they were going to get some money and they wanted to open a second classroom,” Feehan said. “So, that kind of offered a nice opportunity for me to stay local and stay with preschool, which I found I really like, probably better than I would’ve kindergarten, even.”

Feehan has been with the Murray School District for six to seven years.

Fun with learning

“I like that we’re preschool, we can still choose some of the things that we do, which is kind of hard,” she said. “With the school district, there’s so much being told they have to do from the state level or from the national level. With preschool, we have things that we have to follow that are developmentally appropriate, but we can also choose to be a play-based preschool, to be child-led. We don’t do a lot of sitting down and working on papers so much, we do a lot of hands-on, full-body play. And, I love that I can make that choice for the kids I work with.”

Since Feehan also works with special needs students, she said in some ways it can be more challenging, but in other ways, “they’re still just kids.”

“Whether they’re special ed or gen(eral) ed, they’re still just kids,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard for them to understand, why does this child do this differently? But, you can explain, well, everyone’s different and we each have our own skills. And, they get it, probably more than adults do sometimes.”

Jan Brett

Earlier this winter, Feehan’s fellow preschool teacher Gerry Gilbert was in Des Moines and saw that acclaimed children’s author Jan Brett was going to be in Des Moines the next day at a bookstore.

Gilbert texted Feehan the news about Brett being in the area.

“I was like, ‘Wow, I don’t have anything special going on. I may just run up and see if I can meet her.’”

According to Brett’s website, she has more than 39 million books in print and is one of the nation’s foremost author illustrators of children’s books. Brett lives in a seacoast town in Massachusetts, close to where she grew up.

Feehan went to Brett’s presentation during the bookstore visit in Des Moines and purchased a few of her books for her classroom.

At that visit, Brett’s bus was decorated artwork with her new book, and Feehan was told if she posted a picture of it online, she would get a free poster. However, if a picture got the most online votes, the winner would get 10 hardcover books signed by Brett.

Helpful response

Feehan shared the link on social media, and one could say, it went viral.

“Between my friends and family, and our parents’ friends and family of the preschool kids, I ended up with, like, 200 more votes than the second place. So, we got the books,” Feehan said.

Feehan said it felt amazing to have so many people help support the preschool’s cause of getting more books for its students.

“We have a great group of parents, especially this year, who have been very supportive of, basically, anything we need or want from them,” she said. “They have been able to help us out.”

Murray Superintendent Alan Miller said he was appreciative of his staff’s extra efforts for incorporating new learning tools in the preschool classroom.

“They’ve taken time away from their own lives to benefit the students and incorporate it into the curriculum,” he said.

Into the classroom

Once the books arrived, Feehan took the box of delivered books and showed it to her students, who didn’t realize what was in it. One child guessed a coyote was in the box. Other children thought the box was full of blocks. A few did guess books.

The children decided to open the box, and realized if scissors can open their daytime snacks, they can open a big delivery box.

“It took a good 10 minutes to get into that box that was already beat up and had a hole in it with it came,” Feehan said. “They were very excited to find the bubble wrap that came out first. But, then the books came out, and they were like, ‘Oh, we got books, too!’ It was fun. It was fun having them become owners of that experience and take over the ownership of receiving that package and getting into it. I think that will make the books that much more exciting, too, because they can tie that other experience into it.”

At the time of the interview, the books had been delivered only the day before, so the children hadn’t had much time to read the books.

Lesson plans

During that time, Feehan’s class was doing a study on snow and ice, which was multi-week lesson. The delivery of Brett’s books was good timing because three of them involved snow or ice.

Feehan said many of Brett’s books tie-in really well to her lesson plans or learning new things.

“We find that kids pick up on more things if you read a book more than once,” she said. “Also, she (Brett) is an illustrator, so the books, the illustrations are awesome.”