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Mariko Denton

Sabatino Cimato, Mariko Denton & Matt Chimera

Mariko Denton is the mother of three elementary school students who provided feedback to improve remote learning during the 2020-21 school year. Throughout the pandemic, remote learning has presented many challenges for families, students, and educators. Before the first day of school, Mrs. Denton and her husband Brandon anticipated some of the difficulties that families would soon be facing, especially those with multiple children. They reached out to District administrators in the spirit of collaboration and provided suggestions on how remote learning could be improved even more. These included additional consistency in communication platforms, streamlining the process for providing log-in codes, schedules and other essential information, and adjusting the length of lessons. As the first couple weeks of school progressed, Mrs. Denton gathered additional feedback from other parents in the district and summarized their findings, serving as a bridge between District administrators and families. Mrs. Denton even invited our Director of Elementary Education to her home to observe the remote learning process so that further improvements and refinements could be made. Many of her suggestions were incorporated into the remote learning model, benefiting not just her own children but all Ken-Ton students. In the words of one parent in the District who worked with Mrs. Denton during this time period, “She leads by positive example and actively seeks solutions. She does all of these things because she truly cares about the quality of education in our district. She is Ken-Ton’s unsung hero.”