Cute Misconceptions

Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Kids are so funny. No wonder Art Linkletter and Bill Cosby had a whole show devoted to the hilarious things they say.

Since Earth Day is this Sunday, and I wrote this Earth Day unit last year for my Masters' class that I really liked, we've been learning about the environment these last two weeks. We've been learning big, important words like medio ambiente (environment) and contaminacion (pollution) and vertedero (landfill) and reciclar (you can guess that one). All very exciting stuff. Naturally, after learning several new vocabulary words, my kids sometimes get them confused. Or just the whole concept itself.

Today I asked R, "What does recycle mean?" I'd taught it to her earlier in Spanish but asked this question in English, so I was curious what she would do about the words she didn't know. She said, "It means you throw trash away. And then it goes to a fair and they make paper." A fair, huh? (She meant fabrica, the Spanish word for factory.)

Later, A came in and told me they'd recycled their trash after lunch. I asked, "What will happen to it now?" She said, "They're gonna take it and make more food." I told her that they can't make food out of plastic, at which point the other kids laughed. A, however, disagreed with me. "They're gonna make new food," she told me, insistently. I hope that plastic food is part of a toy kitchen set...

Well, they got the concept, at least. Landfills are gross, recycling means making new stuff.

Happy early Earth Day! I'm so excited to watch The Lorax tomorrow. (Quite possibly moreso than the kids themselves.)

Cheers!

Facing fear head on!

Today we took the kids on a fantastic field trip to an ice arena. It's always interesting taking them out of Academic Land and putting them in a situation that is totally different. You see them in a new light and get a chance to interact with them in a new way, and I love it.

The kids got their skates laced up and put on their elbow pads, knee pads, helmets, and these huge gloves that were about 4 times the size of their little hands. Honestly, they couldn't hurt themselves if they tried. Once they were all dressed and ready to skate, we took them out onto the ice. Many of them latched themselves to the wall and held on for dear life. 

One of my little darlings was so afraid, she came to the door crying and tried to get off the ice. The other teachers were going to let her stop skating, but these types of situations bring the fighter out in me. I asked her what happened to make sure she was not hurt, and she said through her tears, "I can't skate anymore. I'm too scared." "What are you scared of?" I asked. "That I'm going to fall," she sobbed. "I want to stop now." 

"NOPE!" I thought to myself. "Not a chance." I told her no, she was not going to quit because she was afraid of falling. I took her in my arms and we slid away from the wall. Then, without letting go of her, I simply let her fall. She hit the ice on all fours, completely unhurt. I then asked, "And what happened when you fell? Did you hurt yourself?" "No," she replied. I then proceeded to pick her up off the ice, and immediately let her fall a second time. "What happened that time? Did you get hurt?" "No." We repeated this exact same exchange three more times, and by the fifth time she fell, she was smiling and chuckling. When I was sure that she'd been convinced that falling wouldn't kill her, I picked her up and sent her off to skate, reminding her that if she fell again, she should just get back up and keep skating. 

When it was time to get off the ice, she couldn't wait to tell me how brave she'd been. "I skated! I skated all the way over there, all by myself! And when I fell down, I got back up again! All by myself!" 

It's moments like these that remind me why I do what I do. There are few things in the world more beautiful than a child learning to believe in herself.

Sometimes, the worst thing that can happen is not nearly as bad as we fear it is. 

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Some days,.I'm pretty sure that the entire Youtube video "Stuff Teachers Say" could have been filmed in my classroom, quite possibly in the course of one hour of regular class time. If I had a penny for every time I've repeated myself today, I'd be the richest teacher who ever lived.

"Stand up. Sit down. Stand up again, QUIETLY. Sit down, QUIETLY. Walk. Go back and walk. Go back and walk. Go sit down. Get started working. Tell him to stop. Open your book. It's time to read. At work time, I expect you to be working. Open your book. Go sit down. That's not how we do that. Do it again. Do it again and do it correctly." And on, and on, and on...

I was chatting with a teammate after school, telling her how bad I felt that my college student volunteer had to watch me do this today. I want to always be that teacher that inspires her volunteers to say wonderful things like "I want to be like you when I grow up."  I had one say that to me a couple of years ago. I want to be back in that moment. But alas...not today.

As I was sharing my frustration, my lovely teammate responded most insightfully and encouragingly, "That's first grade. This is what we do." And she's right--we do. We deal with management issues. We tell our kids to go back and practice correct procedures. And if we have to, we say the same thing over and over until they get it. My awesome mother concurred: "She's seeing real first grade. So now she'll know what it's like and how to deal with it when she gets there." True. All very true.

So...

Sit down QUIETLY. Go back and walk. Open your book. Pick up your pencil. Do it again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes, You Close the Door and Cry.

Sometimes, love hurts. And on days like today, it hurts a lot. 

One of my students is a bit of a late bloomer. She's been struggling since the beginning of the year, and I've been working with her individually every single day for the past three months to help her be a more successful academically. After all of the time, effort and data collection (that's always the hardest part, really...keeping track of everything I do), I had finally completed all the requirements to have her referred for extra pull-out support. I left work Tuesday on a high, excited that my little girl would finally be getting the support she needs. 

That was three days ago. Today, I got a phone call in the middle of class to let me know that my little girl, the one I'd been working with for so long, the one  I'd had to keep and report so much data on, the one I'd FINALLY gotten referred after all of the backflips and handstands I had to do to make it happen...that little girl was gone. 

Just like that. She left. 

It was all I could do to hold it together until I took them to music class. I was beyond distraught. So much time, so much energy, so much work, and now she's moved to another district. That means not only is she no longer in my class, but because she's not in the district anymore, they may not have or request access to her records. So her new teacher may just have to start from square one. Also, I don't think they have bilingual schools in her new district, so she'll be even more behind because of the language change. 

It's times like these where I wonder what it's like to work in a district where this kind of stuff doesn't happen constantly. A district where the class list you get in May stays exactly the same til the following May and kids' phone numbers always work and their addresses stay the same all year. I bet it's nice...

I held it together as long as I could, and then I just had to shut my door for a while. 

To those who know what it's like to work so hard for so long and have it all fall through your fingers in a day...stay strong. You are not alone. 

Flexibility

Teaching comes in many forms, and for me, that means coaching in addition to my regular classroom time. I have a co-coach that works with me at group practice, and he's been gone for the past two weeks. It's been tough without him, but I'm managing.

Last year, we tried holding workshops where we'd take the large group, split it into two parts, and work with the kids separately. I tried doing it myself last week and it ended up being difficult to manage and less than successful. Determined to make it work, I adjusted my strategy today and made practice more interactive and engaging for everyone, and the team members who were excused early actually seemed sorry to leave! Better still, we were able to finish in less time than usual.

I was talking with my mom about how I was feeling quite efficient and productive after practice and how it was a big improvement on last week. She replied, ”You're really good at reflecting and adjusting.”

A high compliment for a teacher! After all, isn't that what we do every minute? We gauge how well our students are understanding and responding to what we are teaching them and we adapt accordingly. We reteach, demonstrate in greater detail, stop and do some jumping jacks, shift gears, simplify or increase challenge, add scaffolds and support. We are constantly taking the pulse of our class and making adjustments accordingly. To do it well is to do our best.

Thanks, Mom.

Let Them Lead

I have to blog this because I laughed out loud as I was reading it.

I'm working on my Capstone and I'm studying conferring, and I'm reading this book No Better Way to Teach Writing, which is about how a group of Australian teachers. After listening to Donald Graves and reading one of his books, they decided to implement Writers' Workshop, which they called "The Conference Approach." One teacher highlights her struggle to let the child lead during a conference, allowing him to teach himself rather than just telling him what to do:

"Wait," I said. "Where is that part in the story?"
Irritated, he looked, then said, "I haven't wrote that yet."
"Well, where would you write it so the reader knows your story is about a car race?"
He picked up his pencil and wrote the sentence--at the end! Into my impatient mind flashed the uncharitable thought, 'No, dimwit, write it at the beginning.' But I managed to stay silent...When he finished, I asked him to read it back.
...he said..."That sentence doesn't make sense there."

Isn't it amazing what can happen when we allow children to take the lead in conferences? Providing lean prompts, asking good questions, directing children to notice and consider pertinent aspects of their own writing...because she let him figure out for himself that it didn't make sense, this student learned a skill that he could use in subsequent pieces, all on his own. He learned the importance of telling the reader what his story is about, and how to use an arrow to insert information that is missing from the beginning or middle of a piece.

Holding back our own ideas and letting children lead in conferences...so difficult, but so powerful.

Sometimes, Listening is Teaching

As I'm diving deep into the heart of conferring, I'm learning so much about how to listen to kids when I converse with them about the work that they are doing. Every so often, particularly with students who don't demand quite as much of my attention, I'll ask a simple question and the child will freeze. I am then hit once again with the painful realization that they think that the purpose of teacher questioning is to inform them that they did something wrong. What a horrible message to receive.

I had this experience just yesterday with one of my little ones. He was writing a story about playing in the park with his family. I was watching him, just observing and writing down everything I noticed him doing as a writer. When he erased part of a word and changed it, I asked him "Why did you do that?" 

He froze.

He stared at me, with a cross between mild wide-eyed shock and frowning confusion. He seemed to be thinking, "What did I do wrong?" and "What do I say?" Since kids erase for a number of different reasons, I was genuinely curious about his thought process. And in fact, he hadn't done anything wrong. He'd done something very right. I just wanted to know what it was.

Debating how thaw out this frozen moment in the conversation, I rephrased my question. I said, "I noticed that you wrote that word, and then you went back and changed it. I just want to know what you're thinking. Can you tell me what you were thinking?" He then informed me that he was thinking, "...that it was the same as this word (he pointed to a word in the previous sentence). And I already said that." He changed "and we played the played" to "and we played the game", which made perfect sense. I then complimented him for independently going back and rereading his work to make sure it said what he wanted it to say, and I told him how smart that was and that good writers always do that. By the end of our conference, he was smiling and happily writing again. We didn't have time to get to a teaching point, but I didn't care...that was enough.

Sometimes our teaching point is as simple as:

I'm not listening to correct you, I'm listening because I care what you think.