Stephanie Girardot focuses her camera Wednesday morning on her youngest child, 6-year-old Dawson, to snap one last photo before he starts first grade in JeNeil Devlin-Grace’s class at Peterson Elementary School.

She walks up to him, wraps her arms around his shoulders tells him, “I love you.”

Girardot said her son couldn’t wait to start school.

“He was so excited he had a countdown,” she said.

Standing back among other parents, the adults attempt to maintain a short distance between themselves and the line of young students as they walk into the school. A few parents go in for last-minute hugs and assurances from their children that they will be OK.

Inside, the first-graders sit down in front of their cubbies and learn basic routines for the school year. A classmate taps Dawson Girardot on the shoulder to say “hello.”

The hallway is bustling with the activity of students putting away backpacks and taking tours of the office, nurse’s station and library.

A few timid latecomers arrive through the entrance clasping their parents’ legs, heads buried on their hips, while walking to their classrooms.

The more seasoned second-graders — including the “Mega Two” class — pack their cubbies fairly quickly.

Mega Two is what team-teachers Lauren Beach and Stephanie Kolar have dubbed their large classroom of 35 students.

This is the first team-taught classroom at Peterson, according to Principal Rick Anfenson.

A combined third- and fourth-grade classroom also was created as a short-term solution to alleviate elementary overcrowding in Kalispell. Edgerton Elementary also has a team-taught classroom this year.

“This is the biggest Peterson’s ever been,” Anfenson said of the nearly 400 students at the west-side school. “We’re over state accreditation in kindergarten through fourth grade.”

Beach and Kolar spent their summer planning how they will teach the Mega Two. This is Beach’s third year of teaching and Kolar’s second. Combining two sets of teaching backgrounds has its advantages, Kolar said.

“We bring two sets of skills to share with these kids help them be the most successful students they can be,” Kolar said.

Beach said they jumped at the opportunity to collaborate.

“I think we compliment each other’s teaching style and the end result is a strong team focused on student-centered learning,” Beach said.

Beach and Kolar understand team-teaching is not without its challenges.

“We have to be very flexible and work together,” Beach said. “Communication is key. We did a lot of purposeful planning together to make sure we had a successful year.”

The teachers have determined how they will share teaching responsibilities  — when they will switch between different roles of teaching and helping students.

“We decided who will be taking the lead on instruction and teaching the lesson, while the other teacher maintains the classroom — making sure students are on task and making sure students understand an activity,” Kolar said.

While there will be some times the class will break up into smaller groups, Beach’s and Kolar’s focus is keeping the entire class as one cohesive unit, not assigning students or groups to one particular teacher.

“We want to make learning as seamless as possible between the two of us,” Kolar said. “We are one team.”

Peterson, like Edgerton, has utilized just about every available space for instruction. Bookshelves have been moved outside of classrooms to the hallway, which provides some extra space to accommodate more students Anfenson said.

Anfenson takes a peek at a music class of 27 fourth-graders. Students are clapping and shuffling around in the small room located on the stage, which was converted into a room by putting up a soundboard so that the former music room could be used as a general classroom.

During lunch the students eat in shifts between 11:30 a.m. and about 12:50 p.m. in time for a 1 p.m. P.E. class because only 10 tables fit in the gym.

“Right now we think we’re pretty efficient at getting 400 students through,” Anfenson said.

 Breakfast is served in a hallway.

“This is why a multipurpose room would create more flexibility,” Anfenson said about proposed additions to Peterson the multipurpose room and four additional classrooms if a $3.35 million bond request is approved by voters.

The money also add four classrooms at Edgerton and a new central kitchen at Kalispell Middle School.

“We’ve really stretched our infrastructure, but we’re doing our very best,” Anfenson said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.