thinking big August 4, 2011

Our children are away at camp, so last night my husband and I had a Wednesday date for dinner and a movie (“Crazy, Stupid, Love” — highly recommended).  At dinner, he said, “Do you have any goals for this coming school year?”

And with that, I was off.

• I want to have a clean desk.  Every day.  I’m going to have to rethink a lot of things about storage and daily routines, but it would be so great to have a clean desk.
• I want to reduce clutter in the classroom.
• I want to have a class binder that has all my important info in one place, including…
• …my lesson plans, which I still want to figure out how to do on the computer.  I want to come up with a sort of spreadsheet/chart that blocks off the hours in the day, where I can write what we will be doing each chunk of time.
• I want to be better at teaching rhyming and alliteration.
• I want to write more repeated interactive readaloud lesson plans.
• I want to make time to do the RIRA discussions every week.
• I want to do water science with the water table.  I planned on doing it last year, but didn’t get around to it.
• I want to work on teaching vocabulary, and continue working on creating my own set of vocabulary cards.

“So, resting on your laurels, right?” he joked.

It’s August, and my time at home is slowly vanishing, but I am starting to get in the right mindset.  I think I will be happy to go back, when the time comes.

Barnes & Noble educators sale online July 20, 2011

I just got an email from “Barnsey” (as Mrs. Mimi calls it) and they are having an online sale for teachers.

Teach Like a Champion is only $15.37 on sale (instead of $27.95).

Vivian Gussin Paley has a new book!  Actually, it came out last year, and I somehow missed it.  It occurs to me that I have never posted about my deep, abiding love for the books of VGP, and I should remedy that soon.  Anyway, you can check out The Boy on the Beach for only $11.59.

The only-partially-hidden educational conservative in me hearts E.D. Hirsch.  You can get What Your Preschooler Needs to Know for $9.90 if you are a Core Knowledge fan.

Tools of the Mind!  It’s still expensive on sale ($23.45), but definitely worth checking out.  I have posted about this before, and probably need to buy this book.

There are lots more good deals for teachers, so you might want to check it out.

 

 

Mrs. Mimi has a new blog July 20, 2011

It’s called Mrs. Mimi Teaches, and is going to be full of ideas to help teachers in their classrooms.  I say “going to be” because as yet, it’s pretty spare on content.  However, as Mrs. Mimi is a fellow lover of books, school supplies, and being organized, I have high hopes.

(By the way, if you haven’t checked out her original blog, or her book – both of them called “It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages”–you should.  She is snarky and hilarious.)

but what I really want to do is act June 1, 2011

Okay, no.  Joking.  What I really want to do is teach teachers.

I don’t want to get a PhD, however.  I’d totally suck at writing a dissertation (I could never get an A in college on any paper that was longer than 12 pages — I lost control of the form at that length), and to put it bluntly, I would not like to have professors of education as my colleagues.  Nor would I enjoy working at a school of education — most of our schools of education are subpar, including the ones I went to.

So I’m not sure how I’m going to teach teachers.  I ended up not loving the kind of mentor job I had last year — it was pretty tough, with lots of soul-sucking paperwork.

Last week, however, I had the experience of mentoring the way I want to do it.  There is a Spanish-speaking assistant teacher who helps out in lots of the different preK classes with kids who speak Spanish.  She works in my room, and has always been very complimentary.  (She says her grandson is going to be in my class, come hell or high water, once he turns four.)  She also works in the room of a teacher who is new to preK, and has been struggling all year with classroom management.  She pushed all year for the struggling teacher to come to my room to see how I do things, and last week, it finally got set up.

It was great.  Struggling Teacher (ST) was enthusiastic about the visit, had a notebook in her hand, and eagerly took notes and asked questions.  She arrived before the kids did, so we could talk about the room and the way it is set up.  (She was amazed at how well the set-up works, given that my classroom is so tiny.)  She was there when I opened the door, and she saw how lovely and peaceful our arrival time routine is.  As I went through our morning, I was able to give her little asides that explained why I was doing certain things.  She was happy, and I had fun.  I wonder how I could make that into a job……

how much time do teachers actually teach? May 2, 2011

Inefficiency in education drives me nuts.  Long pointless meetings, or staff development that is inane and worthless — these things make my blood boil.  We have so many more important things to be doing.

Sometimes, however, we waste our students’ time and fritter away precious minutes when they could be learning.  When I was a teacher-coach I saw a fair number of teachers who spent a lot of classroom time doing not much of anything.  Alas, mention of time, organization, or efficiency meets some deaf ears at my school.

The Sunday New York Times had an excellent article about a smart way to assess teachers:  videotape them teaching, and record the actual amount of time they spend teaching the curriculum.

…[S]tudies found that some teachers were able to deliver as much as 14 more weeks a year of relevant instruction than their less efficient peers.

14 weeks more in a year?!  That’s powerful stuff.

There was no secret to their success: the efficient teachers hewed closely to the curriculum, maintained strict discipline and minimized non-instructional activities, like conducting unessential classroom business when they should have been focused on the curriculum.

I’m going to share this article with my principal (I suppose I should call her the Princess, since our former principal was the Prince on this blog).

meaningful differences January 5, 2011

Wow, yesterday’s post certainly touched a nerve.  That was the most hits I ever got on my blog, and the most comments.  So thank you, everyone, for being part of the conversation.

So the question is, how do preschool teachers strike a balance between helping their disadvantaged students get a great education and a leg up, and remaining true to early childhood principles without pushing an inappropriate curriculum on them?  At least, I think that is the question.  It’s a little hard to put into one brief sentence.  Or maybe that’s the glass of wine I had with dinner…

The whole thing brings me back to my favorite book on education, Meaningful Differences, by Hart and Risley.  I’ve written about it before, here (referring to an article about the book), here (talking to my 1 year old niece and nephew), and here (talking with my nephew at age 2).   Here’s what the publisher has to say:

Their painstaking study began by recording each month — for 2-1/2 years — one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families, categorized as professional, working class, or welfare families. Years of coding and analyzing every utterance in 1,318 transcripts followed. Rare is a database of this quality. “Remarkable,” says Assistant Secretary of Education Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, of the findings: By age 3, the recorded spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families. Between professional and welfare parents, there was a difference of almost 300 words spoken per hour. Extrapolating this verbal interaction to a year, a child in a professional family would hear 11 million words while a child in a welfare family would hear just 3 million.

Did you get that one amazing sentence, about how the vocabularies of the three year olds in the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families?  When the kids then get to kindergarten, the poor kids have vocabularies of about 2,000 words.  Pretty good, huh?  Well, not when you compare that to the vocabularies of the professionals’ kids — they go to kindergarten with 20,000 words at their disposal.

That makes me sick to my stomach.  Then it makes my blood boil.  And after that, I roll up my sleeves and determine that MY students will have as many rich experiences and conversations as possible.  I do all I can to talk to them and listen to them and teach them about conversations, questions, answers, and discussion.  The inequality they face as a result of their families’ economic circumstances just gives me more reason to do everything I can to get them ready for kindergarten on an even ground with the more advantaged kids they will meet there.

So please keep in mind that I do not teach in the suburbs.  I don’t teach rich kids.  My view of preschool is shaped by my experiences in my urban district.  If I were to teach the kids of college-educated parents, I might have a different view entirely.

Although, knowing how opinionated and stubborn I am, maybe not!

doing “kindergarten” in preschool? January 4, 2011

Yesterday a teacher/mentor from the early childhood department came out to my class to observe Deer, so that she could advise me on referring Deer for possible special ed assessment.  Of course, wouldn’t you know it, Deer was having a pretty good, on-target sort of day, so the teacher at first didn’t think she needed to be referred.  As the conversation progressed, and I shared my observations, and noted that Deer used to receive special ed services until she was exited at age 3, she started to understand and support my concerns.

Anyway, early on in our conversation,  she said something that got me thinking.

“You’re really teaching what used to be kindergarten here, and don’t get me wrong, it seems like most of the class is enjoying it, but maybe it’s a little much for some kids.”

I went home and thought about if I am teaching kindergarten in preschool, and if so, if I am doing the wrong thing for my students.  I thought about it long and hard, and here’s what I finally concluded.

I think that I actually am teaching preschool.  I’m just teaching a content-rich preschool of the sort that college-educated, middle and upper-middle class parents give to their children.  Any of you know any four year olds who are fascinated by dinosaurs and can remember and pronounce tons of names like Pacycephalosaurus and Parasaurolophus?  Four year olds who know about the Caldecott Medal and have favorite authors they can rattle off by name?  Four year olds who are articulate and knowledgeable and interested and interesting?  My sons were like that, and so were their friends.  (Of course, when they were four my sons were also interested in things like bouncy castles and matchbox cars and chicken nuggets; it wasn’t all intellectual at my house!)  And back when I was the mother of four year olds, I wondered why my students didn’t know as much as my sons did, and resolved to do what I could about it.

I am deliberately exposing my students to ideas and facts and experiences and conversations and words and books that they wouldn’t have exposure to otherwise.  We are learning about Under the Sea right now, and are at the stage where we are learning words like walrus, manta ray, and seahorse — words that most of them didn’t know last week, but that most preschoolers with professional parents have known for quite some time.  Pretty soon we will be talking about mammals and not-mammals, and what makes a mammal a mammal.  We will also talk about oviparous animals (hatched from eggs) and viviparous animals (born alive).  We’ll talk about the animals in the sea that are hatched from eggs (seahorses, some sharks, etc.), and the sea animals that are born alive (walruses, dolphins, etc.).  We continue to learn place value along with counting how many days we have been in school, and we are learning about letters, words, and sentences, and how letter sounds can help us read or write words, and we are learning how to ask why, and how to explain our thinking.

The kids seem to love it, and I think that by having high expectations for them, they rise up to the occasion, and they learn more than they would if I just took things easy on them and taught them only simple things.

They might be poor, but don’t they deserve the best, just like your children, and mine?

What shall we learn?, continued October 26, 2010

This is the first card I’ve got posted above my meeting area blackboard.  Here’s what I do to help the children meet these goals:

• Copy/print own name:  The children are expected to sign in every day.  Some of them could write their names already, but others had no idea at all.  I showed them that they can scribble or do pretend writing, and a few of them are still relying on that method.  Others have started to write the first letter of their names to stand for the whole name.  When they are ready, I show them how to write the next letter, and so on.  By the end of the year they will all be able to write their first names.  For the kids who already could, I show them how to write their names with only the first letter capitalized, instead of writing it in all caps.  When they are ready, I might even teach them how to write their last names.  Note:  sometimes I don’t have to do anything.  Their parents and older siblings learn that they are expected to write their names, and teach them how to do it at home.
• Be able to listen to a story:  This one seems easy, but I have a few students who really aren’t listening.  One little girl doesn’t understand (native English speaker, but with some developmental delays) so she plasters a polite grin on her face and then tunes out.  Some of them don’t listen because they don’t speak English.   We have story time daily, and sometimes twice a day.  My Americorps member and my assistant read to children one-on-one sometimes, particularly with the kids who aren’t being read to at home.  I try to make story time alive and exciting by only choosing really good books to read — and by throwing in lots of Mo Willems!
• Answer questions about a story:  This week I finally started to do my weekly “special story” — a repeated interactive readaloud.  Only some of the kids can answer my questions about the story — others raise their hands and then offer an answer to a question I didn’t ask.  (“What do you think the signmaker was thinking when he came back to town and the people chased him into the woods?”  J:  “He run away.”)  My hope is that with a repeated interactive readaloud every week, we will learn how to think about stories, talk about them, and learn how to answer more abstract questions.
• Learn uppercase letters/learn lowercase letters/learn letter sounds:  This is a part of our daily routine, as I have mentioned here before.

Tomorrow:  our next set of goals.

routines — further reflections September 14, 2010

In Sunday’s New York Times magazine there was a letter to the editor that gave me pause:

Despite her admirable developmental perspective, Pamela Paul fails to consider the effect of a sociocultural context that utterly ignores the developmental needs of 3- to 5-year-olds. When small children are expected to sit still, follow a schedule, even learn the alphabet — when curiosity, movement and nonconformity earn a “frowny face” — why are we surprised that so many feel sad, guilty and unworthy? No other culture treats children this age as we do. No wonder so many American kids are unhappy.

This letter was in response to an article last week about whether or not preschoolers can be depressed. The original article was really thought-provoking (if we say that they can, will we overmedicate them?  is it depression or just a phase?  what, if anything, should we do for a depressed preschooler?  are we thinking it is something else — like special needs — when actually it is mental illness?).

But the letter — “When small children are expected to sit still, follow a schedule, even learn the alphabet” — gave me pause.  Right after writing my routines post, in which I advocated expecting children to sit still and follow a schedule (and even earn the alphabet), someone says that this is wrong, and harmful to children.  Maybe she’s right, and I’m wrong.

On the other hand, if you keep reading, she says “when curiosity, movement and nonconformity earn a “frowny face.”"  I know that’s not true in my classroom.  Curiosity, movement, and nonconformity are treasured in my room.

And I think that there are good reasons for what I do in my class.  For one thing, the letter writer is presumably college-educated.  She is probably talking about kids from middle-income homes with college-educated parents.  And maybe those kids don’t need much in the way of academics in preschool.  Most of my students come from families in poverty, where few, if any, family members have been to college.  I do what I do to get my students to travel as far as possible so that when they go to kindergarten, they will have the skills and experiences and knowledge of children from middle-class families, and they will not be allowed to fall behind right from the start.

I’m tying myself into knots over this.  What do you all think?

Mapping the year September 6, 2010

Miss Mellow and I met at a coffee shop on Saturday morning to plan out our year.  We worked for an hour and a half and could have easily gone for another hour.  We were in the “flow” and having a great time discussing curriculum, how to balance all our frameworks and expectations (and all that is expected of us), and what really matters in preschool.

We plotted out the themes for the year, and each one will last for a month, which is different from what I have done in the past, with my 2-3 week themes.  We started fleshing out different things to focus on during each week of our themes, and realized that we need to ask guiding questions for each theme.  What is it, really, that we want the kids to know at the end of each month?

I went home exhilarated, and have been working on typing up my list so we can get it all down on paper and then share it with the rest of the preschool teachers in our district.  I’ll post it here, too.