Search results matching tags 'classroom management' and 'best practice'

my brain is overloaded

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:30:04 GMT

On the one hand, spending a morning with preschoolers can be lovely and simple. Read stories, play, follow routines, talk, play outside, learn about interesting things.

On the other hand, spending a morning with preschoolers can be made frustrating and complicated. And that can be from outside forces, or it can come from me.

I had my second data meeting today, and the main idea was to meet with our teams and talk about how we can plan for small group instruction to work with children on their areas of need. I talked with the afternoon teacher (how rare is that opportunity!) and one of our literacy coaches about how to do it in our short period of time. With their help, I have a tentative plan to do a short small group time every day after morning meeting, starting on Monday.

Here are some of the many things I am thinking about — so that they are crowding my head and I can’t think straight, let alone prioritize and figure out how to get it all done:

How can I get the breakfast kids (14 out of 19 kids) to eat faster and get back to the room sooner, so I can start morning meeting earlier, so we have time for small groups?
When will I (and how will I) place the kids into 4 groups? I need to find the time to look at the data I have so far….
How are we going to manage the Americorps volunteer getting all of her IGDIs (Individual Growth and Development Indicators) done? Especially when I keep needing her in the classroom? Especially when the kindergartner from across the hall spends a good part of his day out in the hallway, sobbing loudly, so that she can’t get our kids to pay attention to her, let alone hear what she is asking them?
How are we going to manage my assistant getting all the portfolios done, especially when she is gone for 45 min of the morning on her morning and lunch breaks?
Story time is going badly, for the first time in ages. I need to back up and stick with short, funny, engaging books. That means more Mo Willems, more Pete the Cat, and that also means abandoning richer, more challenging texts that have content and vocabulary related to our themes.
Which is more important: teaching content via themes, working on basic skills like letters and colors, or working on classroom skills like taking turns, listening to teachers, and cutting with scissors? I can’t do all of them; how do I choose?
When am I going to look at the teaching rubric, figure out what I want to focus on, notify my observer, and plan for my first formal observation?
How will I plan for my daily small groups? How will I manage materials? When will I do the planning/organizing?
Should I come back to school one evening to work? Make my family order a pizza for dinner, since I won’t be there? Maybe then I could get caught up?
Why am I having to come so early every day? This hasn’t happened in years. Why is this year so much harder?
What is the right thing to do for the kids?!

I am disappointed in myself, and feeling internal pressure to do better. I also have very tense neck and shoulders, and am worried that I am basically going to give myself another migraine.

thinking big

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:08:08 GMT

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.

Mrs. Mimi has a new blog

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:56:44 GMT

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

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:25:58 GMT

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 *** 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?

Anonymous — Tue, 03 May 2011 01:04:48 GMT

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).

What shall we learn?, continued

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:24:29 GMT

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.

Mapping the year

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:09:44 GMT

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.

ants! and other thoughts

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:02:33 GMT

*A child from the afternoon class accidentally left the ant farm he’d brought in to show his class at school. My class got to see the ants crawling around, and they were so excited. The science table was the most popular spot during centers time.

*Our district and our union are having a very hard time coming to an agreement over our new contract. They have missed multiple deadlines. Now it’s starting to get ugly. I get emails from one side, and emails from the other, and they don’t recount the same meeting in the same way. Someone must be lying, and that pisses me off. Plus the district sent out letters about the contract negotiations to all the parents in the district, implying that the delays are all the union’s fault. It was nasty and sly, and I guess the opening salvo in a PR war. I wore a tshirt supporting the union, and got a funny look from the Prince. It wasn’t hostile at all; I think he didn’t see me as a union type. He’s right, I’m not, but I just want a contract and I want to get paid, *** it.

*Cherry missed three days last week and two this week. She told varying stories — either she didn’t want to come to school and Mom said she didn’t have to, or she was very sick with bad allergies. I’m worried she and her mother are going down the Chutney and her mom road. Chutney is gone, for no good reason, and I don’t want to lose Cherry, too. (This is partly selfish. Miss Mellow has gotten lots of new students in recent months, and most of them are quite troubled. I don’t want to have openings that will lead to problem children arriving in my class. That’s bad, I know, but I love the wonderful, positive energy in my room, and would be sad if it got disrupted.)

*There are a few kids in my class who are still really struggling. Two of them I am going to refer to early childhood department for assessment. You can show them a circle, name it, show them other circles, ask them to say “circle” and then a few minutes later, ask “what is this?” while pointing to a circle, and they will have NO idea. One father said that the special ed referral was fine, but that his son knows numbers, colors, shapes, letters, etc. when he is at home. If this same child has never shown any signs at all of knowing any of these things in class, what am I supposed to think?

*Others in my class are reading. And counting to 100. And naming hexagons. And writing independently. (I’m going to be videotaped by the early childhood department in a few weeks, because writer’s workshop is going so well in my room. In the fall, we can use the video for a workshop on how to teach writer’s workshop, for the other preschool teachers.)

*The weather is ridiculously good for this time of year. Miss Slinger is loving her new garden. And I love the flowers that are starting to bloom. Especially the four year old kind.

teachers and time

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:41:34 GMT

So I’m reading this Atlantic Monthly article about “What Makes a Good Teacher,” and thinking about the finding that good teachers spend a lot of time preparing for their classes. And each morning lately I have had trouble getting through everything I need to do, so time is on my mind.

I understand why spending a lot of time on preparation helps a teacher be a good teacher, and I feel bad about not spending enough of my own time on preparation these days. It’s harder for me to be willing to do it now — back when I had little kids at home and little kids at school my whole life and all my time was about little kids needing me. Now my children are older and more independent, and I’m ready to claim some of my time back. It’s hard to keep coming in to work early and staying late, and so I just don’t do it as much anymore. I guard my private time fiercely — I think I’ve earned the right to read some novels, and I know that if I devote all my time to the needs of all the different children in my life, I will become stressed and unhappy, which won’t be good for any of them, whether they be my sons or my students.

Then when I’m at work, time is an issue. There is so much that I’d like to do — or need to do — each day, that it is hard to get to it all. Today we watched a clip from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and we visited National Geographic kids to watch videos about fish (we particularly liked the one about the mola), and we visited Starfall to learn about the letter L, and those were just the things we did using the video data projector. We also had gym class, and centers time (of course), and morning meeting. In my role as mentor teacher, I am supposed to be assessing my kids for writing workshop (a pre-assessment to gauge their progress as we get into the writer’s workshop process, which is next up on our staff development plan), but I decided to put it off until tomorrow, and do an intro to writer’s workshop instead of reader’s workshop. Or maybe try to do both, if I shorten centers time. Argh.

There’s also my internal to-do list. A person from the early childhood department came this morning to do a letters and sounds assessment with my class, because I’ve been to busy to get it done myself. (It was great that she came — I know I’m lucky to have that kind of support.) I remembered to track down the social worker who speaks Spanish to talk to the child I’ve been worrying about as a possible case of neglect. I forgot to get any portfolio assessment done at centers time. I almost forgot to write the morning message or teach the class about the letter L. I ran out of time for story time. And I have lots of things to do as a mentor — books about teaching writing to kids that I need to read, and observation reports that I need to finish.

At the end of the morning, however, there was extra time. The bus was late picking up the children. We huddled inside the door, waiting, and we sang songs, practiced counting in English and Spanish, and then talked about lunch. I told them I was going to have chicken and rice for my lunch — and then the children helped me remember the phrase arroz con pollo to describe it. The Latino children’s faces glowed, and they told me, “I eat that, too!”

flying with one engine burned out

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:22:05 GMT

I mentioned that I have been sick. The last few weeks have been difficult; I’ve been overcome with a bone-deep fatigue and had difficulty coping with….well, everything. I was so tired I couldn’t even think straight about how weird this was and how maybe I should call my doctor. The last straw was when I left the house to pick up my son at basketball practice last Thursday and couldn’t remember how to get to the gym, even though I have been there many times before. I called a friend for directions and almost started crying.

I called in sick the next day. (And Chutney sure did miss me.)

The good news is that there is an explanation. The new medication I have been taking daily to try to prevent migraines (this would be attempt #5, including acupuncture and chiropractic) has hit me with some serious side effects. I am now off the meds, and each day I am about 2% less exhausted. At this rate it will be a long time before this stuff is out of my system. But at least things are getting better.

Last week was particularly hard, I thought. Marvelous Mittens Day wiped me out like it never has in the past. We didn’t even get to the big make-a-mitten project that I always do on that day. By Hot Chocolate Day, the kids were starting to act up, and that worried me. This class is so angelic! Something really must be wrong for them to be even close to the bratty side. And what was wrong, you ask? Their teacher wasn’t behaving like herself.

That was the other thing that got me to go to the doctor. If the kids were being affected by my exhaustion and my lack of focus, then I really needed to find out what was wrong and pull myself together.

This week I mentioned to Miss Slinger, “Don’t you think things are getting better? I feel like things are falling back into place now that I have a little bit more energy.”

She said, “Actually, I never thought they were that bad. I knew you were really tired, but I thought things were going fine.”

I thought about that a minute and admitted, “I can be pretty *** myself.” Last week I wasn’t up to MY usual standard, and that really frustrated me. Maybe no one else noticed, but I did. I felt guilt about not doing my best for the children, and not doing my best as a teacher, and that was wearing me down, too.

Which brings my train of thought to its conclusion. Maybe one of the most important things you need to be a good teacher is to be self-reflective. I have been trying to mentor a few teachers lately who seem entirely incapable of looking at their teaching and wondering how they could learn something new, or how to improve. I find that way of thinking really foreign, and am at a loss as to how to proceed with them.

I can always see how I could have done something better. Maybe that is what has made me into a good teacher?