By:  Molly Hester and Gina Saxena

As soon as you walk into the preschool room, all you want to do is be a kid again. Here at Westborough High School we are lucky enough to have a teacher who supports both kids and teenagers to express their feelings and their passion through both learning and teaching. Daniela Plant has been teaching the study of child development and running the preschool at the high school for four years now.  

Ms. Plant has been now teaching for a total of eighteen years; she taught kindergarten for ten years and has been teaching high school for the past eight years.  When asked who she likes teaching more, Plant describes teaching both preschoolers and high school students as “The best of both worlds.”

She describes how she feels about the high school students who teach along side of her. “It is so exciting teaching the high schoolers how to teach the preschoolers, because the high schoolers that help teach are just as excited and motivated to learn as the preschoolers.” She even went so far as to say that the “High Schoolers are just preschoolers in big bodies.”

 Plant grows attached to both her teachers and students she says, “That she feels sort of like a surrogate mother, because she gets the opportunity to see both sets of children grow and develop into amazing people.”

 When asked how to describe how she feels seeing “her” children grow and develop she says that she feels, “Warm and fuzzy, I could be having the worst day ever, and just being able to make a child smile, and see how happy they are, instantly makes me feel better.”

Running the preschool is like running three schools, Plant has to get the children ready, the high school students ready, and everything that the parents of the students need to know.

 Plant says she is well known for making lists. “It seems like a crazy life, but the reward of teaching a student and watching them grow and develop makes it all worthwhile in the end.”

When asked where she will be in the future, Plant simply replies with a joyful tone “Teaching—[and]welcoming the next group of students through the doors of Westborough High School.”

Background Information on Ms. Plant:

Born and raised in Germany, Ms. Plant moved from place to place as a child. She stayed in Germany until she was eight and then moved to Virginia. From there, she moved to Leominster, Massachusetts where she went to high school. After her secondary education she attended Lesley University in Cambridge, MA where she earned a degree in Education.

 Ms. Plant has always wanted to be a teacher.  Her third grade teacher, Ms. Marks, inspired her to teach.  When asked how she liked it at WHS, she replied, “I absolutely love Westborough High, I love the people and the kids, love, love, love!”

When Ms. Plant isn’t teaching, she spends time her with her fiancé and two children; she has two boys ages 21 and 16. At home she loves to garden, take care of her horses and even play hockey with her close knit team.