By Tanita Gaither
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - A Columbia College professor is getting a lot of praise online after the school posted photos of her going above and beyond to help a student who needed to be in class on Wednesday.
The school posted Wednesday, saying the student had to be in attendance for a class presentation and could not find a sitter for her son. Her teacher, Amanda Stefanski, told her to bring her son to class.
Today a #CCofSC student couldn’t find childcare & needed to be in class for a presentation. She contacted her professor who encouraged her to bring her baby boy to class. Dr. Stefanski then offered to hold him the entire class so that her student could focus on her school work. pic.twitter.com/UyvORhEUxq
— Columbia College (@ColumbiaKoala) October 17, 2018
The school posted: “Today a #CCofSC student couldn’t find childcare & needed to be in class for a presentation. She contacted her professor who encouraged her to bring her baby boy to class. Dr. Stefanski then offered to hold him the entire class so that her student could focus on her school work.”
One student tweeted her own photos, calling Stefanski “#bestcollegeprofesever.”
For her part, Stefanski said she just wanted to help student Abby Harvey out in any way she could.
“[Harvey] stopped by my office to let me know she didn’t know what to do about the next day’s class because she had no one to watch her six month old and she needed to be there for group presentations,” Stefanski said. "Some of her classmates had told her, just bring him - I know Dr. Stefanski has helped out other students when this happens. But she didn’t want to just show up with him, so she came to ask what I thought. "
She told Harvey to bring 6-month-old son, Emmett so she could hold him during their 50-minute class.
“I’m sure that there are a lot of professors out there who do this kind of thing, so by no means am I trying to say I am this amazingly flexible outlier,” Stefanski said. “It’s more that - I teach teachers, right? And one of my favorite teacher quotes is: ‘Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’ I have always tried to embody that, and it is SO EASY at Columbia College, because that’s norm in terms of our faculty and student relationships. If even one of my students can somehow carry with her that unique aspect of teaching, then who cares if I had to stop a couple times to pick up a stuffed giraffe?”
Columbia College President Carol Moore said Stefanski is exactly the type of educator the school admires.
“Dr. Stefanski epitomizes the dedication all Columbia College faculty and staff have towards student success, and exemplifies the College’s commitment to being student ready,” Moore said.
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