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?

pro athletes visiting schools February 18, 2009

As I came in to work this morning, looking at all the favorite book door decorations, and thinking about how I have failed to organize anything else for I Love to Read Month, my mind thought back to a school I worked at long ago.

One day, we had some pro athletes come to school to talk to our kindergartners about reading.  The memory still rankles.

My class had a young man come in to speak who apparently had no real idea of why he was there.  He used the occasion to complain about the leeches in his personal life who were always trying to get money from him, now that he was in the big leagues and making the big bucks.

I’m sure he went to college along the way to pro sports, but it hadn’t seemed to have made much impact.  He rambled on about his personal problems, without any awareness that the five year olds in front of him couldn’t understand anything he was saying.

My students had really hard lives, and really huge needs.  This was the class that played “Call 911, my boyfriend is coming over to kill me” in the house corner.  And here we were, stuck, wasting our time listening to the inane ramblings of an inarticulate, overpaid, undereducated man-boy.

So no, you will not catch me organizing a visit from athletes to talk to students about reading.  Instead, you will find me actually reading to the children.

Why I teach preschool (instead of kindergarten) August 4, 2008

Splatypus’s comment about my last post got me thinking about the days when I taught kindergarten in one high-poverty school after another.

Kindergarten can be high-stress for a teacher.  And not just because her students are living in poverty and have all the problems that go with poverty.  Kindergarten can be high-stress because districts are now putting a lot of pressure on the teachers to close the achievement gap and produce results. 

Your kids should be doing these things at the start of the year, and if they’re not, you better catch them up.  Then in January you better show these test results, and by the end of the year, they better know how to do every single one of things things on this long list here.

When I taught kindergarten, my children showed up years behind, and I had to try to get them through all the educational and social experiences that they missed in the first five years of their lives, plus get them through kindergarten to be ready for first grade.  In many instances, it wasn’t possible.  I would be trying to teach the kids to read and they would go to the bathroom and not come back.  I’d go see what they were doing, and find them at the sink, lost in rapture, playing with water and bubbles.  When they were toddlers, they never got to play with water and bubbles, and here they were, making up for lost time.

I tried really hard to teach preschool and kindergarten simultaneously, but that was hard.  I tried to be their teacher, their mother, their father, their social worker, their therapist, and their disciplinarian, but that was hard, too. 

I went home every day feeling like a failure.

Now I teach prekindergarten, and while I work with a similar demographic, it’s a different experience entirely.  My kids come to me missing all sorts of things they should have gotten in the first four years of their lives, sure, but for some reason, getting them one year earlier makes a world of difference.

I can get them through preschool, and I can get them ready for kindergarten.  In fact, I can send them off to kindergarten even a little bit ahead of the game.

I go home every night feeling like a success.

So that’s why I’m a preschool teacher.

(image from superdairyboy.com via Google images)

Who needs preschool? July 14, 2008

Does your child need to go to preschool before kindergarten?  Does every child need to go?  What do kids need to learn before kindergarten, anyway?

I think preschool is great, but it isn’t necessary for everyone.  If you are raising your child at home, and you’re reading to her, talking to her, playing with her, taking her interesting places, counting with her, doing art with her, and getting her together with other children regularly, then your child is probably fine skipping preschool and going straight to kindergarten when she’s five.

Here are some skills that will help your child be successful in K:

• speak in sentences
• recognize name
• write name (at least a few letters)
• count to 30 without mistakes
• count 10 objects accurately
• identify basic colors and shapes
• recognize at least 10 letters of the alphabet
• know at least 4 letter sounds
• draw a recognizable picture of something
• listen to a story attentively
• follow two-step directions
• know how to solve problems (he took my crayon, I forgot my lunch box, I can’t find my cubby, etc)
• be able to play cooperatively with other children

A child can get those things at home, or she can get them at preschool.  It depends on the parents and what they are able to give.  So if you’re a stay-at-home mom and you don’t want to send your child to preschool, then don’t.

If you’re a work-outside-the-home mom and your child goes to daycare, no worries.  As long as you’ve chosen a high-quality daycare center, your child will do very well.  My sons went to a wonderful Montessori daycare center, and they arrived at kindergarten way ahead academically.  Your child will pick up what she needs in the preschool room, and will be ready for K emotionally, socially, and academically.

As for universal preschool, I do think we need it.  Not to make all children go, but to provide it to the children who need it most, who otherwise will arrive at kindergarten already far, far behind.  Preschool is critical for those children. 

Some of them are my students, and it feels like an honor to be their teacher.

On not being safe May 19, 2008

How’s this for a headline?  “Teacher tries to help preschoolers stay alive.”  I nearly spit out my coffee this morning when I saw that one.

Preschool teacher Marisol Sierra, who teaches in the Chicago neighborhood where schoolkids are getting shot, has incorporated gun- and gang-safety into her preschool curriculum.  That’s worlds away from the usual curriculum of colors, shapes, ABCs, friendship, storytime, and counting, but it makes perfect sense.  It’s just incredibly sad at the same time.

I remember my first year of teaching kindergarten, in one of my city’s worst neighborhoods, when the little girls in the house corner would play “call 911 — my boyfriend is coming over to kill me!”  I had a police cap in my dress up box, and would put it on and come over to reassure them and let them know that they were safe.

I also had to put on my police cap when I saw the children in the house corner doing the “duck and cover”, dodging bullets.

Early entrance to kindergarten May 12, 2008

Today we had a visitor.  It’s a common occurrence in my classroom, only today, our visitor was four years old.  We’ll call him Charley.  Charley’s dad brought him to school so that I could watch him play in my room for an hour, and evaluate whether or not he will be okay to enter kindergarten in the fall, even though he won’t be five by the cutoff date.

It’s a new system, instituted last year, that works better than the old system.  The old system was that parents begged the principal, and the principal said yes or no depending on their gut, or their mood.  It was very inconsistent and unfair, so the early childhood department came up with a procedure that all schools are supposed to follow. 

So now, in the spring, I have small visitors who come and work in my room with my students, and I observe them and fill out an observation form.  If they get enough points, they pass, and they can come to K in the fall.

I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I’m glad that the early childhood dept. got involved, and that they came up with a consistent procedure.  On the other hand, I think it is still a bit too lenient.  I think many of the parents who want their child to get early admittance to K are really thinking about the full-day aspect, and not having to pay for daycare in the afternoon (if their kids are instead sent to a pre-K classroom like mine).

Also, it’s a grade skip.  Starting kindergarten a full year before you’re supposed to is a grade skip, and I think it should only be for the kids who are clearly advanced academically, socially, and emotionally.  Besides, don’t a lot of experts say that boys tend to mature more slowly at that age, and shouldn’t be pushed ahead?

Hoagie’s Gifted page has a bunch of articles on the topic, as does this article from the ERIC Clearinghouse.

Charley did fine.  He was quite reserved, but he separated from his dad readily, and did respond when spoken to.  He followed directions, paid attention to what was going on around him, and followed our routines.  He had fun playing in sand, and even got along with our Miss L. — that is, until she hit him and had to leave the sand table.  I talked to his dad, who said that they just moved here from another state, where the cutoff is different, and where, had he stayed, he’d be going to kindergarten in the fall automatically.  Also, he knows his letters and sounds and is starting to learn how to read.

I’d be interested in hearing what other people think.