A Year to Remember or, What He Said...(My Confessions)

Scott in Nashville was MUCH more honest in his confession than I was originally prepared to be. After reading this post, I changed my mind...

This year was a year to remember for all the wrong reasons.

I returned after a 7 year hiatus in a leadership position. Anxious to reconnect and feel like my school was home and the teachers were family and that I would have a team to work work and be welcomed  warmly.

IT. DIDN'T. HAPPEN.

I floundered.
I cried, a lot. (But not in front of the children)
I raised my voice...way too often.
I wasn't very nice at times. 
I didn't have enough fun with my students.
My students didn't have enough fun with me.
I didn't run my classroom according to my core beliefs.

IT. WON'T. HAPPEN. NEXT. YEAR.

You see, I have found a job teaching Primary (Kindergarten) in a tiny school that already feels like home with staff that already feel like family. There are as many students in the entire school as there was in the wing my classroom was in last year. I am so very excited! I have learned a TON in the past year. I have a wonderful support system and I am ready to move forward and make 2013-14 a year to remember due to all of the great things that will happen in my classroom! 

"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. My personal approach creates the climate. My daily mood makes the weather. As a teacher, I posses a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be an instrument of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized."  
~ Haim Ginott

#Kinderblog13: Pre-race packet and warm up exercise!

I am a Primary (4 and 5 y.o.) teacher in Nova Scotia, Canada. 

I have been in this profession since 1988 and have held a number of different positions, most of them as classroom teacher in the early grades. 

Eight years ago I took on the role of coach in elementary mathematics and that developed into a position as Consultant of Elementary Mathematics for our school board. I held that post for 3 years and did a lot of work providing PD for teachers, working on curriculum revisions with our Department of Education and the like. While I did spend time in classrooms, I felt out of touch with what it was like to have my own classroom, be a part of a staff and make sure that I was doing a good job teaching EVERY subject, and not just mathematics. Last spring I made the decision to return to a school, a classroom of my own and put my skills to the test. While it was the MOST DIFFICULT year I have ever had as a teacher, not once did I regret my decision to return to the classroom. That has to tell me something, right?

What do I BELIEVE?
I believe that 

• students need to be the "doers" of learning. Yes, there is a time to sit, listen and converse, but they need to be doing things in order to learn them.
•  Primary/Kindergarten is the toughest teaching job there is.  
• all teachers need to be encouraged and supported to grow professionally throughout their entire career
• I am a lifetime learner with a passion to better serve my students

How do I FEEL?
I feel 

• excited to begin another journey at my dream school (moving from a LARGE school to a SMALL school) 
• scared that the difficulties I experienced this past year will resurface 
• happy that I am enlarging my professional development circle by using Social Media as an avenue to communicate with other teachers

 

Library Organization

I've decided to "Go Big or Stay Home!" where my classroom library is concerned. I have a ton of books (I thought I wouldn't have enough...) and before they go into the hands of the students they need to be sorted, categorized and labeled so that they are easy for students to put away.

I purchased a Classroom Library package from Teachers Pay Teachers. It included book basket labels (very important) but also individual matching labels for each book. So, today I am printing what I think I might need as far as the labels go.

When my classroom is ready in a couple of weeks, my niece and nephew will help me sort and label the books and get them into easily identifiable bins...tons of work, but I hope it will pay off in the long run!

What I Do When I Can't Sleep...

What do you do when you can't sleep? After several unsuccessful attempts at talking myself back to sleep I grab my iPhone and start surfing. This morning I discovered this Book Study! I had downloaded this book, The Daily 5, on my Kindle months ago and had skimmed it but not read it all.

I figured that since the book study started a week ago, I had better get reading so I could catch up to the others in the Book Study.

Here's what I marked as important:

• The way teachers structure the learning environment and the way students spend their time influences the level of reading proficiency and the end of the academic year. 
• How will we ever know what students are learning if they don't hand in pages for us to correct?

I happen to LOVE this! I am not a fan of worksheets - they are a make work project (mainly for me) and I don't believe that students get much out of them. Don't get me wrong - there is a time and a place for having students record their work, but there is a difference between a recording sheet and a worksheet. We will know what students are learning by using balanced assessment and making sure that we use C.O.P. (Conversations, Observations and Products - Anne Davies) to do so.

• Instructional time is in addition to the time spent reading in school

My literacy block next year will be about 2 hours. My School Board recommends that I do one hour of reading workshop and one hour of writing workshop. I wonder where The Daily 5 fits? Some of my friends have tried this approach, loved it, but been chastised (for lack of a better word) for doing so. I am eager to find a way to meet the requirements of my school board's expectations, but at the same time use this approach to teaching.

• The Daily 5 is the largest part of their literacy curriculum each day (location 197) - it is the structure that allows all children to do meaningful work independently as we work in small groups with individual children. 

My goal will be to find time to meet with small groups or individuals during the literacy block in order to provide instruction and complete assessments with students. This structure looks like it will provide these opportunities mainly because it insists on student independence. I believe that will the proper supports and expectations for even our youngest students, they can be successful.

• This book is NOT about their entire literacy curriculum (location 221), but is about helping students develop habits for students. Instructional time is used to present daily focus lessons within the literacy curriculum.

The structure that is recommended for my classroom includes daily focus lessons within a three part lesson: Time to Teach, Time to Explore and Practice and Time to Reflect and Connect. I value these three parts and need to find a way to make connections between this format and the Daily 5. 

• This book is not a prescription for literacy success. It is about developing shared awareness through instructional routines with students...while balancing students' need for choice and independence (location 228)

There are a few questions that I hope will be answered throughout this book study, the main one being;

• When does the reflection piece happen? 
• If there is no reflection, will students understand what it is that they have been learning? 
• Will solidification of understanding take place? 
• I am a firm believer in wrapping up each lesson with a conversation that reflects back on the goals of the session. Having students talk with one another about their successes and challenges and their plans for tomorrow. Does that happen in the Daily 5 and if not, should it become part of this structure? 

Wish me luck in finding answers to these questions. I am certain I will have more as the book study continues!

It's All Coming Back to Me Now...

Do any of you know the song, It's All Coming Back to Me Now, by Celine Dion? Well, it describes right now, in this moment, exactly how I feel about my return journey to the classroom. I have had the privilege of working with one of our most knowledgeable mentors who has had the challenge of trying to bring me up to speed in any of the curriculum areas that do not concern mathematics. It is safe to say that the "Learning Curve" is more vertical than an actual curve.

When I left the classroom 7 years ago, teaching literacy was one of the things I thought that I did really well; it was an area that made me enthusiastic and confident. As soon as my decision to officially leave the world that has been mine for the past 7 years, elementary mathematics, I knew that my focus had to shift to Literacy. And shift it has! Things have changed, but they have also stayed the same. Everything I am learning has a familiar ring, but the biggest shift I think I have noticed wasn't a surprise - teaching is intentional. From the books we read to the lessons we teach, it is all done using information gained from working with our students and striving to meet their very diverse needs. I need to watch, talk with and learn from my students and they will provide me with specific information that will help me decide where to go next.

I have been researching both reading and writing workshop, looking for examples of focus lessons, anchor charts and word study information. I now have several binders dedicated to these topics and they are filling up already. Yesterday I am sure that I printed nearly an entire package of paper! I have replaced one ink cartridge and have some spares on the side waiting to go to work.

Beyond the personal mentoring that I have been fortunate to receive, I have discovered what I believe to be, exemplary online resources.

Right now, the ones I have been visiting most have been:

Mrs. Meacham's Classroom Snapshots provides endless resources that will support so many aspects of my classroom beyond the Literacy piece.

Wachusett Regional School District which has an entire section devoted to Literacy. I have found yearly plans, lesson plans, lists of mentor text, you name it - I found it here.

I have not had much time (or paper) to begin exploring ReadWriteThink, which is the website of the International Reading Federation. Here I have found a ton of classroom resources that will also be helpful to me as the year goes on.

Just this morning I discovered the PFlugerville ISD , an online curriculum site for all subjects, which  appears to have a ton of useful information.

My goal is to use this blog as the spot to keep track of my return trip to the educational place I love the most, my classroom. I hope that I will be able to provide information to others, that they may also find helpful in their journey as well.

If any of you have suggestions for other websites that I may find helpful, I would love for you to share them with me.