The End is Nigh

If I knew anything about basketball, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use "March Madness" to describe my students, classroom, and teaching practice.  However, I'm not really a fan of basketball, so in my mind, March has been crazy, chaotic, wild, and MAD--but in a good way.

 To be perfectly honest, I struggled a lot with feeling stressed out about various things, namely grad school work and the First Lady of Georgia visiting our classroom as a mystery reader.  My administration put an immense amount of stress on the teachers at my school to perform perfectly for a visit from Sandra Deal and have our classroom and school looking perfect.  This mindset clashed with my beliefs in a number of ways.  For one, I don't generally care about the appearance of things.  I care more about genuine learning and meaningful experiences for my students.  I had a really hard time accommodating the tension I felt to provide purposeful learning opportunities for my students when my administration was emphasizing a spotless classroom, and meeting after meeting to prepare for this visit.



Being on edge with my administration contributed a lot to the ways I reacted to conflict with my students, and working with students to deal with their own frustrations.  To say I had a short fuse was an understatement.  I would go home at the end of the workday and feel immensely guilty about how I handled interactions with students and the lack of meaningful experiences they had that day.  I wondered, how was I supposed to improve my teaching practice and actually affect student learning, if I was under this pressure? Honestly, I don't know how upper elementary teachers do it with all the testing and requirements of student data as well as performing for visitors.  It's ridiculous, and reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Chip Wood, it is the job of the school to meet the academic needs of the child, not the other way around” (2007, p. 27). So to summarize my lows, it has been a month filled with stress about things that don't actually have anything to do with students learning, enjoying learning, and enjoying one another.  


On to my HIGHS.  And they are HIGH! One of the happiest days came on the Tuesday after Sandra Deal visited our classroom.  This day felt like a dream.  It felt like all the weight on my shoulders was lifted off and I enjoyed so much my students and learning together with them.  It didn't hurt that the weather was amazing and we did all our small groups outside and enjoyed the natural playground.  Furthermore, my students wanted to help me set up small groups for their peers, and so I let a few children help me put the groups together and for the next 3 days they helped set up the groups outside.  It was such a great display of leadership, community, helpfulness, and enjoyment.  

We've also been enjoying a few units based in non-fiction text.  So my students have been engaging in a poster project to teach other readers about space.  They all used their own skills independently, or in collaboration with other students to create a poster on a certain topic on space.  They used mentor texts (nod to Carl Anderson) to draw inspiration for what they wanted other readers to know about space.  Some posters were simply visual with dictation on post it notes for formal readers to read about, and other students used phonemic spelling to write what they wanted others to know about their space topic.  

Another high was venturing into some inquiry based experiments with water.  I expected that students would engage in learning in some way--but I never guessed they would direct their own learning by asking questions, investigating together, and finding ways to solve complex problems.  I simply got to sit back and enjoy their discoveries.  This was such a huge high for me because my heart needed some encouragement.  Watching students learn and enjoy learning together is what makes it all worth it for me.  

I'm also looking ahead to what we have going on in the next few weeks.  I'm brining in so many guest speakers (many of them family members of my students) and we're finalizing our TICC projects--which are going in so many directions (GOOD THING!).  I'm just excited for what we will accomplish in the next months. Finishing grad school and leaving my school (for a new exciting opportunity) is bittersweet.  






 

How's it Going, part 2

Chapter 4: Matchmaker, Matchmaker

I really love this quote from Chapter 4 in How's It Going?, "When we are successful in showing students how to learn from writing mentors, we teacher students how to teach themselves" (Anderson, 2000, p. 110).  I'll be honest--I've never considered writing mentors as a tool for students in their writing  endeavors.  However, as an adult I often read books and think, "this is really good writing" so why wouldn't kids do the same thing?      

I like that throughout this whole book Anderson always emphasizes that the conversations we are having with students should be propelling them into being better writers, "After all, the research questions we ask students are informed by what we know good writers do" (Anderson, 2000, p. 112).

I love how Carl Anderson talks about young writers using writing mentors as guides to helping them with their own writing. Although Carl's vignette that initially resonated with me was of him and Natalie (a second grader), I feel like the same kind of conferring he was doing with her could be applied in my classroom. I'm thinking of one student in particular that writes books often in the classroom.  He often writes Pirates vs. Robots or Mummies vs. Aliens books and I wonder where he gets this idea of "versus" from.  There must be a book series I'm not familiar with.  After reading this chapter on mentor writers I definitely think I should do some investigating with my young writer and find out how he is being inspired.

Chapter 5: Laying the Groundwork for Conferences

Honestly, while reading this chapter, I felt constricted by the requirements of Bright From the Start's idea of what Pre-K should look like.  Instead of focusing on what I can't do in my classroom right now, I'm going to highlight what I liked about this chapter as I think about what my Kindergarten class could look like next year!

I absolutely love Anderson's point in the quote, "We call this part the connection because in this part we let students know how our teaching is connected to their needs as writers" (Anderson, 2000, p. 144)--really isn't that intention in all the content areas of teaching we are doing? We are there to teach them what they need to be successful.  I like how the connection piece is crucial to the beginning of a mini-lesson because it immediately sets the stage for student's to see themselves in the teaching that is being done for them.

"We give mini-lessons because we feel that many of the students in our classes need to learn about a strategy or writing technique in order to become better writers" (Anderson 2000, p. 138)

Caulkin's definition of what and why we do mini-lessons is one of my favorite definitions I've heard, "Although mini-lessons may often look like mixture speeches, like brief lectures, they are entirely different from the lectures that were such a part of my own schooling.  The difference can be summed up in a single word: context" (Caulkins, 2000, p. 139). It seems like Caulkins and Anderson are such student-driven educators, and I think that's why I'm so inspired by their work--it is truly about students becoming and continuing to become great writers. I like how they make the distinction between what traditional education looked like for them as students, and how mini-lessons is different from long, boring lectures, but instead a way to inspire students in their writing.

I'm definitely circling this quote in my head about demonstrating good writing to students, "Probably the most powerful way we can give students information about how to do a kind of writing work--and persuade them that it's worth their time to try out that work--is for us to demonstrate that work in from of them" (Anderson, 2000, p. 146).  Part of me wants to remain open to letting students choose their own methods for writing, without the "powerful teacher" giving them all the ideas.  However, in most cases, teachers are experts in writing techniques and need to allow students the opportunities to see and learn important writing techniques.

February 2015

This was such a short month! With a week off in the middle, and 2 inclement weather days, I'm surprised we got anything done! However, as I reflect over the few weeks we were all together, there are some really cool things we worked together on as a family.

 The 2 biggest highs I can pull out of the Theory in Practice chart I've filled out are the inquiry projects we are entering into and the community helpers Teacher Inquiry project I've started implementing.

Reading through The Activist Learner has helped me see how students can work together to share knowledge with each other and the larger community through culminating projects.  After doing some informal prep work during out dinosaur unit and introducing non-fiction books--we delved into a unit on the human body.  Traditionally, my students have been super engaged in a Human Body unit and this year was no exception.  We spent three weeks learning about the body and incorporating a myriad of learning opportunities to engage all kinds of learners in this unit.  At the end, we spent time in a small group drawing on inspiration from non-fiction texts in order to create our own non-fiction book on the Human Body.  To be totally honest, I didn't know how this small group was going to shake out.  There are plenty of times as a teacher you plan something you think is amazing and it flops.  However, I have the really brag on my 4 and 5 year olds right now--they ROCKED the non-fiction book.  They were so proud of making it all by themselves! Furthermore, we got to showcase the book to my administration and parents and let them see just how talented we all are! This project showed me the capabilities of my students and how much self confidence they gained from this project.  We already have in the works a poster project about space as well as a mural project about plants and insects.

My 2nd big high of the month was introducing guest speakers into our classroom to help students see themselves as change agents.   It started off a little rough with our animal expert not being as engaging as I would have hoped, however, we're really excited to host hospice nurses, the watershed management, and other community members that will help us think more deeply about our role in the community.  I'm excited to see where the kids will take it and I'm confident that they will come up withs some amazing stuff to help change their community!

My lows have been consistent with some lows that I've had previously.  Time management and organization continue to be a struggle for me.  Sometimes I have amazing stuff planned for the kids, and it works out great, but sometimes I don't have things planned perfectly and those things tend to fall apart a lot faster.  I often feel discouraged about the fact that I'm not as organized as I think I should be.  I wonder if I'll ever become a type A and organized teacher--and I wonder if this is necessary for me to become the best teacher I can be.

I also struggle with some of my students having emotional breakdowns on a daily or almost daily basis.  Although I feel like I do my best in the moment of being able to meet them where they are at--I often feel as if I'm not reaching them properly.  I know that I can't have all the answers and I shouldn't feel guilty for their reactions.  I can't believe this school year will be over in 3 months--we've accomplished so much together and we still have SO much more to do.