New teacher coming to work at Sunnyside

Sunnyside Intermediate School has a new fifth grade teacher from western Washington.

"I'm looking forward to getting to know my students in this new area," Amanda Hoefs said. "I'm new to the area, so new students, new people, new culture, so I kind of want to immerse myself in and meet everybody, I'm really excited about that."

She said she is from a small town called Aberdeen, Washington, where she not only grew up, but started teaching.

She attended Grays Harbor Community College for her first two years then finished at Western Governors University of Salt Lake City, Utah, online, she said

Her degree is is elementary education, K-8, she added.

Prior to teaching here, she said, she taught second grade for one year and sixth grade for two years.

Sunnyside is opening Wednesday with a hybrid model of some students attending Monday and Wednesday and others attending Tuesday and Thursday with Friday online learning for all the students.

Students who have opted out of returning to the school building will do remote learning all week.

Hoefs said early this month that she was preparing for both classroom and online learning.

"Right now, I am preparing I am looking at my pacing guides because curriculum is new to me, so I'm looking at pacing guides - right now I'm preparing that we're in class," Hoefs said. "I'm going to teach a normal class setting, but if we go back online I'll just turn it all digital."

She said she would keep the pace amount the same or may slow it down a bit because she wouldn't be in person teaching.

She would be using a combination of Zoom and Google Classrom - Zoom to meet with the students and Google Classrom to put out the assignments and instruction.

"I'm excited to be here," Hoefs said. "I'm ready to start this adventure."