I wrote a bit in the fall about my student teaching placement experience, but I haven't yet written about my placement for the spring. Short version: I'm working in kindergarten, with an amazing teacher, at a very privileged school. Long version: let's dissect!
1. I'm working in kindergarten...
Going into student teaching, I was pretty clear about my preferred age range for teaching: mostly interested in 3rd grade, still very interested in 2nd or 4th, open to 1st grade, and probably not so much in kindergarten. So why did I accept a placement in kindergarten - and my spring placement, the one where I'm teaching five days a week and doing my full-responsibility two-week takeover?
First, a reminder of how the placement process works. Under new PA regulations, people getting elementary or middle grades certification must do multiple fieldwork placements, to ensure that they are getting broad experience within their certification range. So, in the elementary program, we had a pre-K placement in the summer, and then one semester in K-2 and one semester in 2-4. Since I did my fall in 3rd grade, I was supposed to do my spring in K-2.
We got a lot of input into our spring placements, and while I didn't rule out kindergarten, I wasn't exactly communicating enthusiasm. Over the course of multiple meetings with NancyLee, our program coordinator, though, we ran in what felt like circles discussing my general preferences, and it wasn't until fairly late in the process that I saw a lightbulb illuminate over NancyLee's head. It was a kindergarten classroom, she explained, but if I was open to that, she thought it would be a great match for me. An opportunity to see in practice many of the methods we'd studied, particularly for literacy instruction. To watch an extremely experienced and respected teacher manage a classroom. To work as part of a relatively collaborative team of teachers. I was sold. I was going to kindergarten.
And, to my (partial) surprise - I've loved it.
I think this is what I've liked most about kindergarten: more than with any later grade, in kindergarten you really get to meet each student where she or he is, figure out precisely which skills they need to work on, and teach them the fundamentals they need to get there. It's an incredible challenge - to do it well, you really have to learn a ton about linguistics, for instance, in order to be able to deconstruct individual words and sentences in a thousand ways and match particular lessons to individual student needs - which I find really enjoyable and endlessly fascinating.
Not to mention the joy of working with the students - maybe I'll devote a blog entry in the future to ridiculous things said or written by the kids in my class.
...with an amazing teacher...
As I had hoped, I'm really getting to see some phenomenal practices, which I hope to adopt in my own classroom someday. Even something as simple as a read-aloud - trying to follow my classroom teacher's example, when I do a read-aloud now, I: 1) fill the book with sticky notes reminding me what questions I want to ask or things I want to point out on every page; 2) write a couple vocab words from the book on note cards, and review them with the students before opening the book, incorporating some sort of activity (e.g. asking questions, developing corresponding physical motions & sound effects, etc.) to help them build their associations with these words; 3) do an extensive review with students of relevant background knowledge, making connections with things from students' lives as well as previous classroom lessons, often allowing students to talk with partners before sharing with the class; 4) carefully analyze the book's cover together, looking for clues regarding the book's content and making connections to any previous or future discussion topics. And that's just the stuff that I do before we even open the book!
I'm also learning a lot about data gathering. I haven't always been an especially organized person, but I've learned a ton in this classroom about collecting and storing data on student skills and progress in order to better tailor and structure future lessons and one-on-one discussions.
She's also been really great about pulling me aside between lessons and explaining to me precisely what the thinking have been behind that lesson and the one coming next, and answering any questions I may have. Come to think of it, that's something that my cooperating teachers have been phenomenal about all year.
...at a very privileged school.
The school where I am working has a lot going for it, compared to most other public schools in the city: more experienced teachers, smaller class sizes, more resources and better facilities, tons of parental support (in the form of both volunteers and resources), not to mention substantially lower poverty rates and higher parental education rates than the District as a whole.
Setting aside any sociopolitical conversations about the school, here was a major concern I had about working at this school: assuming that things in the classroom functioned well (i.e. no major behavior disruptions, high student motivation, etc.), how could I determine whether it was because my teacher was doing a good job or because of other factors within the school? As they say in statistics - correlation or causation?
Well, that's obviously not a question I'll be able to answer. But, there's two reasons that's beside the point. First, there are enough differences among students and among classrooms that I can still see how the teacher responds to challenges in ways that are clearly effective, so I'm definitely learning in that sense. More importantly, I now (for the first time, really) have a vision of what I'd want my own classroom to look like someday, in the ideal sense. As a first-year teacher, I'm sure I'll have plenty of challenges, but knowing what I'm aiming for and having a large bag of tricks to draw upon to get there - well, I'm not sure there's any other way to feel "prepared."
1. I'm working in kindergarten...
Going into student teaching, I was pretty clear about my preferred age range for teaching: mostly interested in 3rd grade, still very interested in 2nd or 4th, open to 1st grade, and probably not so much in kindergarten. So why did I accept a placement in kindergarten - and my spring placement, the one where I'm teaching five days a week and doing my full-responsibility two-week takeover?
First, a reminder of how the placement process works. Under new PA regulations, people getting elementary or middle grades certification must do multiple fieldwork placements, to ensure that they are getting broad experience within their certification range. So, in the elementary program, we had a pre-K placement in the summer, and then one semester in K-2 and one semester in 2-4. Since I did my fall in 3rd grade, I was supposed to do my spring in K-2.
We got a lot of input into our spring placements, and while I didn't rule out kindergarten, I wasn't exactly communicating enthusiasm. Over the course of multiple meetings with NancyLee, our program coordinator, though, we ran in what felt like circles discussing my general preferences, and it wasn't until fairly late in the process that I saw a lightbulb illuminate over NancyLee's head. It was a kindergarten classroom, she explained, but if I was open to that, she thought it would be a great match for me. An opportunity to see in practice many of the methods we'd studied, particularly for literacy instruction. To watch an extremely experienced and respected teacher manage a classroom. To work as part of a relatively collaborative team of teachers. I was sold. I was going to kindergarten.
And, to my (partial) surprise - I've loved it.
I think this is what I've liked most about kindergarten: more than with any later grade, in kindergarten you really get to meet each student where she or he is, figure out precisely which skills they need to work on, and teach them the fundamentals they need to get there. It's an incredible challenge - to do it well, you really have to learn a ton about linguistics, for instance, in order to be able to deconstruct individual words and sentences in a thousand ways and match particular lessons to individual student needs - which I find really enjoyable and endlessly fascinating.
Not to mention the joy of working with the students - maybe I'll devote a blog entry in the future to ridiculous things said or written by the kids in my class.
...with an amazing teacher...
As I had hoped, I'm really getting to see some phenomenal practices, which I hope to adopt in my own classroom someday. Even something as simple as a read-aloud - trying to follow my classroom teacher's example, when I do a read-aloud now, I: 1) fill the book with sticky notes reminding me what questions I want to ask or things I want to point out on every page; 2) write a couple vocab words from the book on note cards, and review them with the students before opening the book, incorporating some sort of activity (e.g. asking questions, developing corresponding physical motions & sound effects, etc.) to help them build their associations with these words; 3) do an extensive review with students of relevant background knowledge, making connections with things from students' lives as well as previous classroom lessons, often allowing students to talk with partners before sharing with the class; 4) carefully analyze the book's cover together, looking for clues regarding the book's content and making connections to any previous or future discussion topics. And that's just the stuff that I do before we even open the book!
I'm also learning a lot about data gathering. I haven't always been an especially organized person, but I've learned a ton in this classroom about collecting and storing data on student skills and progress in order to better tailor and structure future lessons and one-on-one discussions.
She's also been really great about pulling me aside between lessons and explaining to me precisely what the thinking have been behind that lesson and the one coming next, and answering any questions I may have. Come to think of it, that's something that my cooperating teachers have been phenomenal about all year.
...at a very privileged school.
The school where I am working has a lot going for it, compared to most other public schools in the city: more experienced teachers, smaller class sizes, more resources and better facilities, tons of parental support (in the form of both volunteers and resources), not to mention substantially lower poverty rates and higher parental education rates than the District as a whole.
Setting aside any sociopolitical conversations about the school, here was a major concern I had about working at this school: assuming that things in the classroom functioned well (i.e. no major behavior disruptions, high student motivation, etc.), how could I determine whether it was because my teacher was doing a good job or because of other factors within the school? As they say in statistics - correlation or causation?
Well, that's obviously not a question I'll be able to answer. But, there's two reasons that's beside the point. First, there are enough differences among students and among classrooms that I can still see how the teacher responds to challenges in ways that are clearly effective, so I'm definitely learning in that sense. More importantly, I now (for the first time, really) have a vision of what I'd want my own classroom to look like someday, in the ideal sense. As a first-year teacher, I'm sure I'll have plenty of challenges, but knowing what I'm aiming for and having a large bag of tricks to draw upon to get there - well, I'm not sure there's any other way to feel "prepared."
No comments:
Post a Comment