The End of One Journey Leads to the Beginning of Another

          The ending of GO Project Summer 2014 is bittersweet. There has been much growth from the students and the teachers in my opinion. Although there is still so much room for growth, the relationships built and the lessons learned have been valuable. I see the children helping one another. I see the children learning games and routines. I see the children responding faster. This also means that we as teachers have to provide more to stimulate their minds.

            The teachers of KC created a small yearbook for the children so they can remember their first summer at the GO Project. We had them all dictate messages to their friends and we all got sentimental over our time together. One student mentioned that her favorite thing about GO was Harambee. Another mentioned how much she loved her new teachers. The creation of this book has helped us all reflect on the past five weeks in a positive way. It has been a great experience for both the students and the teachers, which is evident in the works and comments we have shared with one another.

During my pre-student teaching seminars, I had heard the GO Project brought up in discussions. “Go Project is tough.” “The kids have problems.” “There are a lot of IEP students.” Despite the opinions of my fellow classmates and teachers, I did not have any strong impressions upon starting the student teaching experience at GO Summer. My entire teaching career has been at a school for low-income families. Many of the students in my school are bilingual and/or have IEPs. I was not concerned with teaching children who are “difficult”.

            As the summer progressed, I was pleasantly surprised that some of the children that we were warned about were not exhibiting the behaviors noted of them. I will say that the children do get rowdy, but they are children. Learning should be exciting and engaging. I do not blame them for getting loud. Although learning is supposed to be serious, a controlled amount of exuberance and enthusiasm is so welcoming to see from the children.

            I try not to have biases towards the children. It actually helped that I did not begin to look at any of the children’s personal files, which included their IEPs until the third day of GO Summer. I was able to make unbiased observations and then use their files to support some of the behaviors that I observed. After I got to know the children, then I began to learn more about them and their academic needs, it helped me put the pieces together. I was able to think about ways to work with the children, or when the child had reached his or her limit of desk time.

            GO Summer has provided me with the experience to build a classroom from the start of a term to the end. Previously, I had made observations in classrooms that already had routines in place. It was hard for me to make observations and learn how the teachers implemented their routines and adjusted the to the individual needs of their classroom. For KC, we revised the line spots for the children and were able to quickly pinpoint different strategies to motivate each child.

            The month at GO Summer has impacted me greatly. As a new teacher, this is the first time that I have taught in a co-teaching environment where we work together well despite our different personalities. In fact, this is the first time that I have been in a teaching team that has been as smooth as it has been. We do have our “hustle time” where we rush to complete things for the children and minor miscommunications (such as cutting out templates meant for the kids to cut independently), but we all worked through them and did not let that be a point of resentment or frustration. We also were very in sync with each other as to what needed to be done each day and allowing each other the flexibility to do our parts. This means that if I needed to type up some letters and worksheets, the remaining teachers had the classroom learning and management under control while I completed my task. This also meant that if another teacher was occupied with another task such as math goals that needed to be submitted immediately, the others were able to step in and lead.    

            There was a lot of support and solidarity amongst the teachers in KC. We supported each other in classroom management and had the children clarify their understanding to all teachers present. Also, if one was busy with a task, we all stayed in during lunch (which happened often) to pitch in a hand. This was not a classroom environment where one person was left to do much of the work, while the others did not assist or also take responsibility to help. I believe that this teamwork demonstrated to the children that we were all on the same page in terms of goals and expected behaviors.

            Although there have been many great moments this summer, it was a great feeling when the child that we had been dealing with his emotional outbursts had a fantastic week. On Tuesday, he even smiled and told Ms. K that the “good Joey* was here.” (*Name changed for the privacy of child.) He has had an excellent week and even made the recognition portion of Harambee twice this week. He came in late for class on Wednesday because he has therapy.  When we told him that he was called out to Harambee for a great job, he was sad. So as a class, we spontaneously reenacted Harambee for him. This made him so happy that he pumped his fists in the air and said, “all right!” This was a great moment, because as skeptical as many are about Harambee, it means a lot to our Kindergarteners. I hope it continues to be a positive symbol as they grow within the GO Project. This also show that despite the rough moments a child may have, the positive ones still make a strong impact on him/her.

            As I grow as a teacher, I would like to collect the things that I have learned from all the teachers I have met along the way and incorporate my favorite strategies, ideas and songs into my own teaching. I would also take some of the strategies that I disagree with and address them as I teach. If I disagreed with the gendering of children, I would make it a point to say to my classes that colors are for everyone. Pink can be for boys and blue can be for girls. I already have plans to incorporate some of the morning meeting songs into the new school year.

            In the long run, I would ideally be teaching in a diverse classroom setting. I also strive to teach in a cooperative setting where the teachers and children have responsibilities and have the confidence to be active within the classroom. I plan to begin this long-term goal by having my summer volunteers and teacher’s aide to lead read-alouds with the whole class upon my return to my classroom next week. When the children and teachers have purpose, learning is actively occurring. I am not a believer of passive learning. Through the gained independence of all parties within the classroom, I hope to gain more time to incorporate more assessments and utilization of the assessments to inform my instruction. However, this must all come from more careful planning and organization this year. I will make it happen!

There is no cheat sheet for classroom management...

         Since September 2013, I have transitioned from being a classroom aide to an assistant teacher and then suddenly from the assistant teacher to the lead teacher. Due to the circumstances, I began to quickly understand how important classroom management is. Classroom management encompasses so much from making transitions educational to managing behaviors. I remember how at the August 2013 professional development workshops for my school, I steered clear of the behavior management workshops deeming them “boring” and not as pertinent to learn than content specific workshops such as an inquiry science workshop. When I began the school year as an assistant teacher, I realized how misguided I was. I am beginning to understand why classroom management and behavior management is a topic that requires discussion and feedback from your colleagues and peers. Learning will not be effective if a teacher is not able to manage her classroom.

            From my personal experience, I have learned that a teacher must first be able to connect with and engage their students. The initial connection may not necessarily have to be on an academic level either. The children must first know that you care but also know that just because you care, it does not mean that they can run amuck and do as they please. The most effective way, I have found to manage children is by just talking to them and listening to their interests. Once you have found a way to engage them in conversation, you can find ways to connect what you have learned in to something more academic. When I taught about the topic of transportation, I pointed out how a child built bridges but they kept falling over. And based on my knowledge that the boys in my room love bridges and vehicles, I was able to point out specific examples of their structures and how we might make the bridge stay up.

Something as simple as even including the children in stories I read is an effective way to include and engage. I may read The Three Little Pigs and choose three children who have been responsive to directions that day and read their names in place of “the first little piggy”,  “the second little piggy” and “the third little piggy”. And when there is the line of “Not on the hairs on my chinny chin chin”, I have them say the words. I even include the wolf and have that child say, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!”

On an even more seemingly minor instance, I just might hug the student who looks sad and acknowledge that they seem like they just needed a hug. I believe classroom management begins with respect and trust between the child and the teacher. Although, it is easily written about, respect and trust can be difficult to establish and may take some time.

In the GO project, I have learned that although many of these kids come from “rougher” home situations, they still want to have conversations with people. They want to be seen as capable beings. Once a topic of interest is reached, the kids become animated and have a lot to say. They are more apt to share their thoughts and opinions.

Despite reaching common ground with children, there are some who still have a hard time controlling their emotions and behaviors. This is one of the biggest challenges that I face. Many times, I approach the children who have difficulty with their behaviors calmly and patiently. There are those who respond to this and those who look to outsmart the teacher who has this approach. They are agreeable and quick to apologize but no real behavior change occurs. When this happens, I attempt a negotiation tactic where I make them deals. I either use the positive or negative reinforcement approach (you will get stickers or you will need to finish your work when everyone else is having free time). My other approach is to get loud and stern. However neither approach is effective when the consequences/outcome have no value to the children.

Throughout the GO project, I have seen children who are consistently punished with no recess, but the behaviors continue. It seems to me that the children do not fear going without recess. When the situation comes to the point where the child does not fear or mind the repercussion of having recess taken away, I become worried and feel helpless. To me this is a sign that the child is heading for bigger trouble as they age. There is a child like that in my class at the GO project and it is very disconcerting. Kindergarteners should not have so much anger and indifference.

Our cooperating teacher is the one who takes the extremely stern role with him and it seems to work. While my fellow co-student teacher and I take the calm approach, all of our efforts do not seem to have a long-term effect. We theorized that he may be looking for negative attention, but as the weeks have passed, I truly believe that he has not found a method for releasing his emotions that work for him. This is an issue that concerns me. It is tough to be a teacher who cannot get through to his/her students.

I tried to talk to the child and provide positive praise as often as I can, but the outbursts seem to be occurring more frequently. When we try to discuss his behavior with him, he often says, "Go away", "I don't want to talk to you" or "I don't want you to be be near me." During the beginning of the fourth week of GO, we discussed these concerns with the grandmother of the child. She commented that the behavior difference from week one to week four as “oh, that is just him getting comfortable.” I do not doubt the unconditional love of the grandmother, but I am concerned about how to help this child cope with his emotions. He is extremely reactive. He acts before he thinks when he is socially overwhelmed, especially when he is angry. When he is happy, he is great to be around. I have discussed this child with my teaching team at GO and this has helped to gain insight on all the sides of this child. Despite this, we all have our good days and our bad days with him. We have another week to continue to show this child that we care and help him find ways to manage his outbursts, but it continues to be a struggle.

As my role as a teacher, social emotional development and behavior management has become more of my focus with children. As an educator early childhood, I hope that with proper guidance and learning in the early stages, that the children I encounter find acceptable and positive outlets to release their emotions. I also hope to gain more strategies and insight as to how to deal with children who have difficult behaviors. I feel exasperated, but I do not want to give up hope that the children who need help managing their emotions and behaviors will find an acceptable way to do so. On a positive note, there are twelve other students in our room who are showing improvements in their academics and their social emotional development. I do not believe one ever fully learns how to deal with all the different personalities and possible “difficult behaviors”, but it is important to not give up and continue to adjust and adapt to each individual’s personality. An educator I know has the belief that, “Once you connect with a child, they will follow you anywhere.” I hope she is right.

Learning from our Experiences

As a teacher, it is important to be flexible. On the day of my observation, that was the one piece of advice that I believe helped me the most. Murphy is always laying down his law to remind everyone that things will happen and all we can do is make the most out of our situations. Due to transit delays for many people, our observation began later than we had originally scheduled, we improvised by carrying out our full morning meeting and singing songs such as “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” using all the children’s names and some energizers to keep the children engaged and their minds active while we waited to begin our lessons.

When I did begin my M&Ms graphing lesson, it unfolded as I did plan for the most part. I had planned accordingly and was focused on the objectives of modeling how to sort and transfer information to a graph. I was also more attentive in reiterating key terms that I wanted the children to use and learn from the lesson. I repeatedly used the words: graph, sort, more than, less than, the most, and the least as often as I could while I modeled how to graph. I was extremely satisfied with how engaged the children were and how they volunteered to participate.

As I walked around the classroom, the children stayed on task and sorted independently, begun graphing, and were able to distinguish which color M&Ms they had the most of. I was able to ask almost half of the children which color they had the most and which one they had the least of. A few were even able to tell me additional things they observed such as having none of some colors and an equal number of M&Ms for some of their other colors. We were also able to close the lesson with two children sharing their findings with their peers on the rug. They expressed interest in asking their peers questions about their findings and responsibility in picking who would answer the questions.

I was especially interested in using M&Ms as a tool to teach graphing with the children was to engage the children and keep them excited. The M&Ms proved to be something that the children were indeed excited about. They stood up and began to talk simultaneously. Luckily, I was able to bring them back to task by reminding them that I would pick children that were sitting and raising their hands to help me. They quickly fixed their bodies and remained engaged. They made some great predictions about which colors they thought would have the most and we were able to sort and graph all together.

Although, I was satisfied with their level of engagement, I feel that there is usually room for improvement. In hindsight, I would have only picked one or two volunteers to help me model sorting for each step of the procedure. The children proved to be meticulous when they were picking which color they were to sort and how they colored in their graph.

The reason I felt this lesson went well was that I had actually discussed and gone over the appropriateness of the lesson and how to modify it better for the group of students in KC several times with the teaching team in KC and with my professors. We discussed appropriate segues and ways to connect the topic to prior knowledge and efficient ways to streamline the lesson better. Although the M&Ms math lesson is not my original idea, I did indeed have to vary the lesson to best fit the children I teach. My cooperating teacher and my fellow student teacher discussed talk and turns, or ways to keep the children engaged. We decided that keeping the plan simple and straightforward was our best approach considering many of our children become excitable and distracted with too much stimulation.

I believe that the difference between the first observed lesson and this lesson is that I felt more at ease after meeting my observer and discussing ways to improve my teaching strategies such as being able to walk around and assess, staying focused on my objectives, finding ways to help the whole group stay engaged in the lesson, and having the children repeat main points to ensure they have understanding. Making sure the children have understanding of what was expected of them and staying focused on the objectives was really the key to helping me carry out the lesson. I also had time to discuss with my colleagues ways to improve the execution of the lesson.  Although the children threw me for a loop occasionally like when I asked what the children what they were supposed to do at their desks, a child said, ‘whatever we want to”, I was able to laugh and say “good thing, I checked before you went to go work at your desks.” I then repeated the steps and had them repeat the steps to me.

I was able to learn from the shortcomings of my first lesson. I did not let it wither my confidence, but used it to keep me grounded and focused on the important aspects of the lessons such as making sure I modeled the math vocabulary I wanted them to learn and being focused on their learning objectives. My teaching strength lies in how I relate to the children and how I try to listen to what they have to say. Challenges that I want to overcome would be learning ways to write strong lesson plans in less time than it took me to tailor the M&Ms math lesson for my students. As a full time teacher, I will not have the luxuries afforded to me now such as the low student to teacher ratio and the flexibility to teach one lesson a day. I would like to come to a point where I can streamline writing lesson plans and still make the lessons engaging and specific for my students. I hope with time and experience so much more becomes second nature to me.

Supporting All Readers

            When I read articles about “struggling readers”, I often read it with a “slightly raised eyebrow”. I come from an immigrant family who provided what they could for me, but as my parents did not speak English, I could have easily been classified as a “struggling reader”.  As I read these articles, I always look to see the circumstance of the children that are being highlighted. I also look for answers to my questions. What is it about the story that the children do not comprehend? Sequence? Subject matter? Vocabulary? Does the material connect with the everyday lives of the children in your classroom? Are the children English Language Learners?

            I do not accept the notion that just because the children come from low income families or have hard circumstances in their personal life as a reason for their struggles in reading. Although it is helpful to know the background of the family, their income and the educational achievements of their parents, it important to not have those factors as the reason why the children can not read or are struggling. I do believe that as Maslow theorized that children’s basic needs must be met before they can learn. However, school can also be seen as a haven. Teachers can be adults who listen and care. School can shelter and nourish your mind and body as well. I found comfort in going to school. Although some children may have more difficulties doing this, school is often a safe place for children. We take the information about the children’s home lives and we use it to be empathetic and to find ways to help them learn, not to let it be the reason that limits them.

            It is the teacher’s job to make connections from stories/books/concepts to a child’s everyday life. Our job is to make concepts applicable to the children and connect them to their interests and prior knowledge. It is also to make reading and writing a task that can be achieved by all learners. A great example of this occurring in practice is including situations that happened into math problems or into writing prompts.

Our classroom does an author of the day activity and the children usually tell stories about their daily routines or something special that happened over the weekend. Each child has a chance to be an author and an illustrator. Their story gets told (as well as heard) and they build confidence in constructing a narrative or storyline. We need to make connections and acknowledge their life stories and then build from that point.

For example it is popular for schools to include the reading of Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes to introduce a girl’s insecurities about her name. I would instead read The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi. The Name Jar shows a real girl who struggles with feeling comfortable about her name. To enhance the story, I could also tell a small story about how I grew up with a different name and the feelings that I felt. As I recount this to the children, they may begin to make connections of their own. These are more realistic stories. (This also goes into the debate of using stories that depict people instead of animals for certain subject matters.)

As a teacher, it is instrumental for one to pause to check understanding, providing appropriate prompt questions, making connections to relevant experiences, checking understanding of vocabulary, vary your tone of voice so children can infer and make predictions. There can also be a follow up activity to ensure understanding and then repeat the readings. Children often do not tire of repeat readings. New understanding is usually gained when books are reread. For younger ages, discussions can become tiresome. Create a re-enactment! For example, for “We are going on a lion hunt” if the children actually went on a mock lion hunt, the children are more likely to remember prepositional words and the sequences.  Children are naturally visual and kinesthetic learners.  Most adults still learn more by doing than just mere listening.

Borrowing ideas from reading with younger readers for older readers, we can still incorporate finger plays and/or puppets into storytelling and read-alouds.  We can also pose questions such as, “What would you do if you were _____?”  We can also sing songs that rhyme and/or mean the same thing. Dr. Suess books are great resources for word play. We can also play games with synonyms. Take turns saying words that mean the same thing until someone gets stuck, “Fabulous, Great, Excellent, Fantastic, etc.”

“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. During read-alouds, it is important to discuss with children what they are hearing.” (Barrett-Mynes, 2010) I agree with Barett-Mynes that read-alouds are important, but what happens during and after the read aloud also makes a large impact. Much about learning how to read and learning in general is to spend time and practice the skills needed.

The author did a great job highlighting her steps in how her teaching evolved. It is also important to note that the interactive read-aloud and discussions helped comprehension immensely, but also that the children were getting extra time to discuss the books with an adult and their peers. Organic conversations and thinking is taking place. All of this varied and increased exposure is more than likely to have positive outcomes than negative outcomes. How much more time did the teacher spend incorporating these new strategies as opposed to the amount of time spent reading and discussing stories with the children prior to her study?

I am a believer that when we view children as capable beings and provide them with support, they can accomplish a lot. The author was able to really take a look at how reading was taking place in her classroom and adjust it to have the children become more independent. They were able to take strategies and direct their own learning. To enhance read-alouds, making the learning and content meaningful to the children is also paramount.