Jane Conway Loves Teaching Kids

Jane Conway has been teaching at for 40 years, yet she has the energy and enthusiasm of a teacher at the start of her career. Conway owns and directs the school, but her love of teaching has kept her in the classroom. These days, she work in the kindergarten with the lead teacher, Jamie Conway Twesten, who happens to be the youngest of Conway’s seven children.

The line between Conway’s home and work lives is fuzzy at best. In many ways, Little Red Hen is Jane’s “eighth child.” She has a hard time talking about herself, always bringing the conversation back to the school or focusing the attention on her daughter.

But Conway and Little Red Hen are preschool institutions. The Potowomut school was founded in 1948 and is the longest continuously running preschool in Rhode Island. Conway took it over in 1962.

She’d finished her teacher training in the early 1960s and already had four children of her own. When she interviewed at the Potowamut School, the principal gently said to her, “Jane, I love your ideas, but this is a public school and you have to go by the book.”  Jane left that interview and never looked back. 

Conway found her home at Little Red Hen. She loved teaching in a school where she could bring her children. Five of her seven children and her 13 grandchildren all attended Little Red Hen. 

A lot has changed over the years. When Conway started, there was only one class of a dozen or so students. Now the school has four classes, including a full-day kindergarten. The explosion in preschools means that Little Red Hen is one of many such institutions in the area. In the 1960s, Conway said, there was only one other preschool.

But it remains housed in a quaint-looking red schoolhouse overlooking Old Forge Road. On Saturday (May 14), the school will welcome visitors for its first-ever public open house between 10 and noon.

Like mother like daughter

Jane's daughter Jamie graduated from URI in 2000 and has been lead teacher in the kindergarten ever since.  Twesten's “career” at Little Red Hen, however, started much earlier. 

“I think the first time I realized I wanted to be just like my Mom was when she was teaching the children about Amelia Earhart,” she recalled. “I was in high school and helping out in the classroom. Being a teenager, I thought to myself, ‘Oh boy, will they get this? Isn't this way over their head?’ 

“She started the lesson with flying paper airplanes. They never took their eyes off my Mom. I remember thinking, ‘If I could be half the teacher she is, I could be amazing.’”

For Conway, teaching is a way of life. “It is very important for me to assist in the education of children, be it my own children, the children here at Little Red Hen, or my teachers,” said Conway. “They are all my children, too, and I want to see them grow and develop.  When I see that growth, it enriches me.  I never get tired of it.”

Ginny Pettis has been sending her children and grandchildren to Little Red Hen for 32 years. This year, Ginny’s youngest grandchild will be graduating from the kindergarten.

“She brings in new blood and new ideas,” Pettis said of Conway. “Her energy comes from surrounding herself with energetic teachers and the most current and creative teaching practices.” 

 “Jamie is amazing,” Pettis added. “She has added a new dimension to the school by keeping up with the public school curriculum and requirements.” 

Katie Mathews, a former student, has sent all four of her children there. 

“Mrs. Conway is so creative and caring; she is not jaded, even after 40 years and 7 children of her own.  She loves children and has done so much for so many of them.  She is always working on the school, making it better for the kids.”

“My mom is a rock star. You can see it in every child's eyes when she walks in a room,” said Twesten. “I am so lucky to have such an amazing woman to call mom."