Author: Tammy Axt

Amazing work that encapsulates the heart and art of teaching and learning is happening all around the province every day. Many of us can remember that one amazing teacher who had a positive impact on our life. Recently, I decided to look up that one teacher that really had a positive impact on me and wrote her an e-mail telling her how amazing she is. I realize how impactful she was on my current practice and how I try to emulate her caring nature every day in my classroom.

Hello Ms. S,

My name is Tammy Axt (used to be Gallant) and over 20 years ago I had the pleasure of being one of your students.

Today, I spent the day at a workshop where the following question was asked: “Which teacher had the biggest impact on your life?” That answer was a simple one: it was you, Ms. S.

I joined the cross country running team, which you coached, during my time in high school. I was not interested in joining, but my friends talked me into it. I was definitely not the fastest runner that you ever coached, but because of your perfect blend of high expectations and caring nature, I felt great after every practice. You gave up your time after school to run with us around the neighborhood and taught us the mantra “Kill the Hill” when running up the never-ending hill close to the site where the school used to be. You taught me that hard work pays off and to never give up on difficult tasks. I really believed that you cared about us, our futures and our well-being. I have carried so many lessons learned from that time over the past twenty years.

You also supported me through the opportunity of teaching a dance unit to younger high school students when I was in the upper grades. Talk about a confidence builder. You really took the time to help me prepare and execute a successful dance class during your gym period. You valued my abilities and recognized my strengths that I didn’t even knew I had.  Taking on that leadership role was huge for me, and it started to shape my ability to explain things to other people.

As you might have guessed, I am now in the best profession in the world as well. I am a teacher with the Peel District School Board. I teach music, drama and dance to students in grades 1 to 5 and I love it. I try every day to do what you did for me, for my students.

You also might be interested to know that I lead learn to run clinics in my community, where we also have a huge hill. The mantra “Kill the Hill” continues on. I try to look at all of the runners the same way you looked at me: with confidence and belief in their abilities.

I hope this letter finds you well and if you have a moment I would love to hear how you are doing.

Thank you for doing all that you do every day to help kids reach their potential.

Tammy

Classroom management is something that has been drilled into me since day one of Teachers’ College. I use my knowledge and training every day to make sure that my classroom is a safe and enjoyable place for students to come and learn. However, I do believe that classroom management is not always perfect. Sometimes a strategy that you have used for years just doesn’t work with a certain student. Also, every year your new group of students brings with them a new set of challenges. Maybe they are a chatty bunch or a group that really struggles with social skills. Therefore, classroom management is always a skill that needs work and constant reflection.

In addition, sometimes your management strategies can be working with a certain student, then one day, for whatever reason, it stops working. This is the position that I am in this week. I have had one of my students for a couple of years in music and this year, the strategies I have used are just not working as well as they have in the past.

As the problem is escalating, I feel like I have tried as many strategies that I can think of to help this student be a positive, productive member of our class, but nothing seems to be working. So now what?

After I exhausted all of my own strategies, my first step was to book a meeting with my special education team. To help facilitate this meeting, I brought in a few notes to help me explain the issues that were happening in class.

The page of notes that I brought was divided into four sections:

Section one– Concerns

This section outlined the concerns about the academic success of my student. In my experience, this is always the place to start any meeting of concern with administrators or advisory teams, as it shows the impact the behaviour is having on the child’s success in school.

This section also briefly outlined the behaviour concerns that I was witnessing in the classroom. I chose two main concerns as a starting place. I know that if the concerns that I chose were managed, things would not be perfect, but the student would be able to learn and begin to have positive interactions in the classroom.

Section Two- Strategies tried and results

This section explained the strategies that I have tried and what the results were. I wrote about proximity teaching, peer helpers, one-on-one assistance, scaffolding and many more. For each strategy, I explained exactly what I said and did, and what the child’s response was to the intervention strategy. This helped the special education team and I to identify trends and allowed the team to begin to see the picture of the interactions in the classroom.

Section Three – What is working/Not working

For this section, I made a list of things that I felt were working in the class such as: entering the classroom, finding their designated spot, sitting in that spot during introduction of lesson without interruptions. I know some of this may sound very obvious, but it helped the team and me to identify some triggers for the student. It also gave us a starting point for further discussions on strategies to help the student.

Section Four-  Next steps

This was a section that I left blank for notes to record all of the suggestions and ideas.

This is only the beginning of the conversation about this student. We will be meeting again this coming week to co-plan intervention strategies and plan check-in points for this student to gauge the success of our plan.

As a teacher that does not have a home room, open house can be a little different. I try to take the opportunity to chat with parents about the amazing things that their child is going to be doing this year. Often, I teach their children for four or five years so a positive relationship is very important to establish. The challenge that I often have on Open House is that I am only one teacher and I am visited by many of my 350 students’ families. To give waiting families something to do and to encourage shorter conversations with others, I have put up displays for all of the grades from one to five in the areas of dance and music.

In the primary grades, the third part of the music curriculum asks students to identify and begin to reflect upon why people listen and use music in their community. In September, we spent some time sharing our own musical experiences through pictures and written responses and those were displayed for students to shared with their families.

Grade One:

Grade Two:

Grade Three:

Grade Four and Five: My grade four and five classes have been very busy this September creating and playing the drums and xylophones. I displayed a variety of pictures to help students explain what kinds of things we do in class.

Open House can be a great chance for parents to ask questions, get informed and learn how they can support their child’s success throughout the year.

There are many days when things don’t go right when you are teaching. The technology doesn’t work, you get blasted by a parent or you just can’t seem to make a breakthrough with a student who is struggling to read. I figure there will be a multitude of these days throughout the twenty some odd years I have left in the classroom. However, once in a while there is one perfect moment where it reminds you of the reason you love teaching more than anything else in the world. I think that it is important to stop and let the feeling that you made the right decision in this instance wash over you, as it is sometimes hard not to let the negative events overshadow the great things that happen.

I had a former student unexpectedly come and visit me last week. She was a student that I will never forget. She arrived at our school from a war-torn country where she had lost a limb due to a land mine explosion. She barely spoke English and she really struggled to find her place at our school. Even with all of these hurdles, she gave it her all in music class. I assigned her the bass part in our Orff ensemble piece, as she had a rock steady internal beat which is very difficult for students at that age. She did amazingly well. Every single music class, we chatted as well as we could with her limited English, and she kept the beat for all of our pieces with her one hand. At the end of every music class, she looked proud of herself and she left with a smile.  At the very end of the year, she came to me and handed me a small box with a necklace inside and simply said, “Thank you”. It is probably the thank you that I will never forget for my entire teaching career.  Fast forward to last week when she came to visit me and she walked up and said hello. She then continued to tell me all about her new school in fluent English, how she liked her new teachers and how everything was generally going well. Her time at our school was not like some after school special. She had many difficulties right until the very last day, but I am confident that my music class was a happy place for her to come to.

Sometimes, as teachers, we are really hard on ourselves and we forget to take a moment to celebrate the small victories in our day. I challenge you to sit down and think about five things that went well this year, either big or small.