glad I’m not a first year teacher November 4, 2009

On Monday Miss Slinger called before work to say that she was not feeling well, and wouldn’t be in.  I said that was fine, and was on my way to work before I remembered that my Monday help (a special ed teacher and a Spanish speaking aide) had both emailed last week to switch to Tuesdays.  I was at work before I remembered that someone from the local university was going to be in to do a formal observation of me and my classroom (it’s part of a study I agreed to participate in).  And then five minutes later I found out that we had a mandatory staff meeting.

The staff meeting was sad — a disabled boy from an older grade died suddenly over the weekend.  I didn’t know him, but many teachers did, and the mood of the staff was somber.  When we were done discussing the impact of this loss on the staff and students, I had to go to a meeting with a teacher I would be observing the next day.  So I got back to class with only about five minutes to get ready, and there was my observer.

For some reason, this did not stress me out.  I’m usually a stress monster, but I was just amused.   And I kept a smile on my face all morning.

I smiled as the kids came in, signed in, and got to work on their journals.  The woman from the university looked surprised, but I’ve set up some really great routines in my class, and my students know exactly what to do.

I smiled as they worked in their centers, and as I rotated from center to center to talk to them about their work.  “Oh, the house corner is on fire again?  You guys know what to do.  Call 911 so the firefighters can come put it out….”

And mostly I smiled because I am no longer a first year teacher, and I have years of rich experience to draw on.  My classroom is a humming place because my years of struggle and trying to figure out what I was doing are behind me.

Sometimes it’s nice not to be young anymore!

Lesson plans, again October 21, 2009

Today in our leadership team meeting we discussed lesson plans again, and looked at the samples I copied — a lesson plan I wrote before we had the big discussion about what makes a good lesson plan, and one from after, with lots of detail, that references the standards.

We didn’t get much further, although it does appear that there are actually three kinds of lesson plans we’re talking about — and that teachers probably need all three.  One is a schedule — what you will teach, when you will teach it, and in what order.  The second is a detailed plan for each lesson that lists standards, objectives, your plan for differentiation, the questions you will ask, etc.  The third is a curriculum plan for the whole year that shows what standards the kids need to learn and when you will teach each one over the course of a year.

We ran out of time, but it will be interesting to see where we end up going with this.  Apparently some people at our school don’t even write lesson plans, and at a bare minimum, we need to make clear the expectation that everyone writes a daily lesson plan.

my brain is on fire October 7, 2009

I put out the fire with a nice glass of wine at the end of a loooong day, so now I’m just scorched.  Let’s look back on the day, shall we?

I started my day with a meeting.  (Always a great start.) I have a weekly meeting of mentor teachers, master teachers, and administrators.  The master teachers and administrators meet the day before to go through weekly business, and they make decisions for us to approve or not.  It cuts down on our Wednesday meeting time, so I appreciate that.

But.  Actually, I started my day at home, checking my work email, and reading an email about the agenda for the meeting.  And it made me furious.  It said that I had asked that the number of  observations I have to conduct be reduced (which I did not!) and that my request had been refused.  When I got there, we had to get through the first two agenda items, and then we got to the one that referenced me.  Here’s more or less what I said:

“I was quite surprised to read my colleague’s email about the business items to discuss.  I feel that I have been rather grievously misunderstood.  It appears that you discussed a request that I did not make, and that you did not discuss the request that I did make.  While I’m sure I said last week that I have too many observations to do, at no point did I ever request that you lower my number of observations.

“I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, for if I did, it would mean that the rest of you would have to do even more observations than you are currently scheduled for.  What I did request — and what you somehow failed to discuss yesterday — was that you figure out if we think it is more important to get into teachers’ classrooms to do coaching, or if we think it is more important to get all the observations done.  Given that we have fewer mentor teachers than ever, we have more observations to do in less time.  I had hoped to do some actual coaching, and am concerned that it will not be possible.  At any rate, I think it is important that we make a conscious decision, one way or the other.  And I did suggest, as a creative measure, that we reduce all teachers’ observations from three to two, which would mean fewer observations for each of us to do, which would free us up for more coaching.”

Alas, it appears that the rules will not let us reduce the number of observations for each teacher, which means that I have seven observations to do in five weeks.  Given that each observation requires a pre-observation conference, a 45-60 minute observation, 2-3 hours for writing up the evidence to prepare for the post-observation conference, and then the post-observation conference itself, I have at least 5 hours I will have to spend on each one, and that means 35 hours worth of work in the next five weeks totally aside from my teaching.

AUGH!!

The meeting moved on, and we switched to looking at the rubric for lesson plans.  It was a good idea — I’m not sure I ever read that part of our handbook, and I’m sure we as a team have never discussed what makes a good lesson plan before.  One of the master teachers showed a typical lesson plan from one of our teachers one the document camera, and we used the rubric to score it.  The problem?  This lesson plan, which looks a lot like mine (although not as detailed), and a lot like 90% of my colleagues’ lesson plans, got a 1 from all of us.  (1, for those of you unfamiliar with rubrics, is bad.  3 is good, 5 is exemplary.)  It didn’t reference the standards, it didn’t mention anything about differentiation, and it didn’t show anything like closure.

On the one hand, it seems like a good idea to take a good look at our lesson plans, and see if they are good enough.  On the other hand, my lesson plan is a working document that serves ME.  It’s my road map, my schedule, my list of what to do, in what order, and when.  There is another kind of lesson plan — the kind that you write out for one activity (usually when you are going to be observed) that lists in detail your objectives, the standards you are addressing, the differentiation you will do — but really, what teacher every does that for every day, every lesson?  It’s just not possible.

The meeting ended four minutes before my babies were to arrive, so I managed to get two minutes in the room to check in with Miss Slinger and go AUGH about the meeting.  After a really busy morning (during which a little girl reported that Pumpkin had said he hated me — which doesn’t seem to fit his personality, somehow, but prompted a little discussion with him about how it’s okay to be mad at your teacher sometimes, that everybody gets mad sometimes), and a quick lunch, I found a little time to work on the lesson plan conundrum.  Ms. Mellow took her afternoon class to lunch, so I spread out at a table in the room with my plan book, my math curriculum, and my folder full of stuff about teaching Fire Safety, and sat down to write an exemplary (or at least acceptable) lesson plan.

It was fun, actually.  I have been planning ahead (I know, will miracles ever cease?!), so I wrote out the plan for the week after next.  I had to write even smaller than usual to cram everything in — all the standards that my lessons meet, all the details, my goals for the week, and so on.  I’m going to make copies of it tomorrow, along with copies of my lesson plan for this week, written before the meeting today, and give them to the rest of the team.  I figure this will give us some fuel for our discussion.

Because while it was cool that I — for the first time ever — wrote my lesson plans with the standards at my fingertips, it took me more than an hour to write them.  Since it usually takes me 20-30 minutes, I’m not too sure that I’ve got the time for this kind of detail each week.  And frankly, if we tell the staff they have to do their plans this way, I think we could have a full-scale rebellion on our hands.

I also spent an hour each in two first grade classrooms, where I saw that both teachers have worked miracles in the last three weeks, that behavior is well under control, and some terrific learning is going on.

Then I went back to keep working on my lesson plans, until I realized it was ten minutes past the time when I was supposed to pick up my 9 year old from after-school care, and take him home with stops at the grocery store and the library on the way.

The only blessings were that at the grocery store I saw one of my students, who ran full-speed down the bags/wrap/plastic containers aisle to throw herself into my arms, and that there was that glass of wine waiting for me when I got home.

tools of the mind September 27, 2009

An article in this morning’s New York Times magazine has set my brain on fire.  It’s about a curriculum called Tools of the Mind that seeks to teach preschoolers self-control and executive function.  I remember reading this article from NPR on it earlier this year, and am really interested in putting some of these ideas into practice.

One thing in the NYT article that really spoke to me was the importance of play, and how so many kindergartens these days are going to a pure academic focus.  That’s certainly true at my school, and I feel lucky that in pre-K, I can give my students centers time (free play) every day.  But — from what I read in the article, I could be doing a better job.  I’m going to give the article to Miss Slinger to read, and then have a talk with her to see what the two of us can do together in our classroom.  For one thing, it might be a good idea to do some modeling and scaffolding of pretend play, to help the children learn how to do it, or to have richer experiences when they are in the house corner.

Anyone else know anything about Tools of the Mind and teaching executive function to preschoolers that they can share with me?

back to mentoring September 18, 2009

This year I am once again mentoring/coaching other teachers.  I know there are plenty of ways that I can improve, and one thing I’m trying to do is to be more organized about my time, and communicate more often with my teachers.  I’ve started sending out a weekly email with my schedule, and whose classrooms I will visit, and when.  The teachers have responded well to it and a few have even said thanks, which tells me I didn’t communicate this sort of thing to them well enough last year.

The first week I went to the kindergarten classrooms, and was delighted to see that the well-deserving K teachers have a more mellow group.  Last year and the year before were somewhat challenging (two years ago at this time the kindergartners were like wild wolf puppies, tumbling and wrestling on the floor, in all three classrooms, and last year was only a bit better), but the K kids I saw were listening to their teachers and participating in their storytimes.

Then this past week I went to first grade.  One teacher was putting tape on the floor in three rows, to mark where the kids should sit, which is an idea he got from me last year.  I was pleased to see that at least once, I did something useful!  His class was mellow, but the other two were more challenging.  My job is to assist teachers in improving the quality of their teaching in general, and to help them with readers’ workshop and writers’ workshop in particular.  Behavior management is not part of my brief, but sometimes that has to be done before the teachers can settle in to teach reading or writing.

Next week I’ll make my visits to second grade, and then I’ll be visiting on a regular schedule to observe and coach.

letter of the week? July 21, 2009

I teach my students a letter of the alphabet each week.

Phew.  I said it.  I know that those are fighting words to some teachers, so I’m prepared to hear why some of you DON’T do a letter of the week.  And also to respect your arguments.  Here’s a little bit about why I do it.

When I got my master’s degree, I was taught to use a very naturalistic, child-centered, theme-based approach.  That’s what I did in my first year of teaching, and in my second year, I had to face the fact that I had sent my kindergartners off to first grade unprepared.  Sure, I’d talked about letters a lot, and we had played with letter puzzles and magnets, and we had read a ton of books, but none of it really sank in, and they arrived at first grade without being solid in the alphabet.  Granted, this may have had quite a bit to do with the fact that I was a first year teacher, but I also felt that my approach was part of the problem.

The kindergarten team was made up of four women, all of us relatively new to teaching, so we used our lunch breaks and our team meetings to hash out — and agonize — over what we had been taught to do, and what was actually going to work for our students, 98% of whom lived in poverty.  One woman on the team, who is African-American, started teaching her students in a more thorough, teacher-directed way, and we saw that it was working.  We read Other People’s Children, by Lisa Delpit, and we visited an Afro-centric charter school that was using direct instruction, and we started to modify what we were doing.  What I learned most from Other People’s Children was not to make assumptions.

What we think of as a “normal” curriculum for kindergarten or first grade, based on what teachers have been doing for years, works based on the assumption that parents do their part:  read to their children daily, talk to them, listen to them, take them places, give them educational toys.  Children in poverty generally don’t get these things, and they arrive at kindergarten almost completely unready for a traditional curriculum.  We can’t assume that they have been exposed to the alphabet, or that those little squiggles have any meaning to them at all; we have to give them what they are missing, and what they need.

For that reason, I spend a week on each letter.  I teach what the capital letter looks like, what the lower case letter looks like, and what sound it makes.  We practice the names and sounds of the letters daily, and my pack of letter and picture cards gets bigger each week, so we keep revisiting the old ones.  We look at a bunch of ABC books, just for the page of the letter of the week, and we compare the pictures for that letter in each book.  I sing their names in our good morning song, pretending that they all start with that letter.  We write it in shaving cream or we write it on whiteboards.  We look at our nametags, and figure out who starts with that letter, and who has that letter in our name.  I’m always looking for new ways to highlight the letter of the week, and revisit the letters we’ve already learned.

On the other hand, there are definitely some thoughtful reasons not to do a letter each week, like this page from Pre-K Pages, and this book at Amazon.  What do you all think?

Adequate Yearly Progress April 29, 2008

I work at a school that is in trouble.  We are not making AYP, and we haven’t been for a while now.  I think we’re at the point where we really should be fresh-started, and everyone should be let go and have to interview for their own jobs.  We are definitely at the point where we need a new principal.  Our test scores are poor, and not even our white kids are making a year’s worth of progress in math. 

And yet — no one seems to be worried, no one seems to be doing anything.  The principal keeps on telling us that everything is fine and we’re all doing a great job, and so the teachers just put their heads back in the sand.  Few people seem concerned that we are failing our students.  And the district isn’t helping in any way that I can see.

This year has been disillusioning for me.  I used to think we were a good school with a really good staff, and now that I am a mentor, I know better.  I used to think that our principal was terrific, and now…I know better.  I can see that we are a ship without a captain, and have learned what it feels like to crave strong leadership.

The master teacher I work with can see the big picture, and she is getting more and more worried.  She knows what needs to be done, but it isn’t her job to do it — it’s the principal’s.  She is sort of taking on the weight of the building as she tries to get through to him, and prod him to think ahead and make decisions.  All it’s doing is wearing her out.

However, there are little rays of sunshine to notice, here and there.  I had a conference with a first grade teacher this morning, about the lesson I observed her teaching last week, and it went really well.  We looked at her scores from the fall, and she has improved so much.  Her teaching incorporates the instructional rubric and best practices, and she is clearly really self-reflective.  And even the kindergarten teachers, who have been so resistant to change all year, are all doing high-quality interactive read-alouds with their classes every week.

We have learned this year, and we have improved.  I just don’t know if it’s enough.