Growing Together Preschool has had one to two (of three!) Denny children in its classrooms for ten years. I also got my start as a teacher in 2015 at Growing Together Preschool when my oldest child and I both showed up for our first day. Since then, I went on to work for three years at Growing Together, earned my Masters in Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education, and have now been a public preschool teacher for seven years.
Growing Together Preschool has been a second home not only for my three children, but also for me. To this day, I am still dear friends with the people I met while working there.
When I hear other families asking for preschool recommendations, I can’t say, “GTP!” fast enough! I explain to them how for ten years I’ve entrusted GTP with my kid’s lives – physically, mentally, and spiritually. Physically, my kids have enjoyed a safe environment and the ample and beautiful outdoor space there (and we’ve seen many a facelift and beautification over the years), mentally, my kiddos were more than prepared for the cognitive and social-emotional expectations of kindergarten (thanks to the curriculum at GTP), and spiritually my children have been nurtured with a mindful mindset from the staff at Growing Together that allows them to calmly use their executive functioning skills in and out of the classroom.
In our ten years, I have never once worried about my child (or children) who were at Growing Together. Whether I was going to work down the hall within the GTP building, or driving to the school I now work at, I knew my kids were getting the absolute best preschool experience possible in the city of Lexington. While I am deeply saddened that our time at Growing Together is almost done, the nurturing and foundational skills my kids have learned there will go on to live in them forever and will continuously allow them to be a successful life-long learner. -Rachel Denny