Category: General

September, a time to set the foundation for a positive school year. There is an old adage, “Don’t smile until December”, but that is no longer thought to be the most effective approach.  We know that confident students are more willing to take risks and they will learn new routines and information more readily. Learning about brain chemistry we see that there are four chemicals produced in the brain that create happy feelings. They are dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin. Here are some examples that I’ve used with kindergarten to grade 8 students to help them feel happier and ready to learn.

Dopamine

“You did it!” Dopamine gives us a great feeling when we have a sense of purpose and can accomplish a task. Students with ADHD especially need help with dopamine. Many students will benefit from checklists, chunking tasks into small parts, and being given the opportunity to solve relevant problems. Taking on tangible tasks like helping a friend, organizing materials, taking responsibility to set up equipment…these tasks will help a student to be productive at school.

Serotonin

We all need a chance to relax, especially after a busy or slightly chaotic time like recess or a transition between classrooms or between teachers. Serotonin is produced when students take calm breaths, close their eyes, listen to calm music, or engage in an art like drawing. Teachers will feel the benefits as well!

Endorphins

By getting students’ bodies moving with physical education, daily physical activities, dance, and community building games you can help their brains release endorphins. Besides using online videos you can get them outdoors for a game or walk and take time to make scientific or social studies observations of your community.

Oxytocin

 The love chemical can be released if we make stuffed toys available to hug or have a class pet or have animals visit the classroom. Some high schools have effectively used this strategy during exams to help students feel calm. While you have your class out for a walk, take time to observe and appreciate nature. Look for seasonal changes in plants and also in animal behaviour. Even if you are in an urban environment you can always watch the sky and observe weather trends. Another approach is to model how to give compliments and make it part of peer feedback.

I found it exciting to explore information about brain chemistry with my students. The kids are very curious about the brain and I found they used these techniques independently to focus, calm down or help one another.

Have a wonderful time getting to know your students and creating the best possible learning environment.

The beginning of a new school year brings so much excitement. After all of these years, I still get butterflies before the first day. I look forward to seeing my fellow staff members, meeting new students, and creating a community together. During this time, I also think about setting goals. This year I’m finding it really hard to determine what my goals should be. To be honest, it usually consists of something unattainable (and boring), such as staying incredibly organized and eating healthy every day. These goals cause a lot of stress and worry…. And I think I’ve had those same two goals every year I’ve been teaching so far.

This year I’ve decided to try something different. Jamila Dugan talks about radical dreaming in her article Radical Dreaming for Education Now (https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/radical-dreaming-for-education-now). Radical dreaming isn’t a new concept; it’s been explored by many Black scholars over time. In this article, she states:

The idea of dreaming—and in many Black scholars’ views, radical dreaming—isn’t a fluffy notion. Being rooted in our dreams has served the most innovative leaders of yesterday and today. If we look at some of the people who have inspired generations and catapulted us forward, they have often been dreamers—people who had a vision for a world that did not yet exist.

So what does this mean as the educator in the classroom? I wanted to think about my dreams for school – not just my personal goals. What could school be for students? What is my radical dream for my children at home and the students in school with me?

I dream that they will have the support they need to make their dreams and goals come true. I dream that they have agency over themselves; that they feel safe and loved when they come to school. I dream of a space of respectful discourse and learning. I dream of a classroom that helps them to discover all the possibilities of who they are – and who they can be.

It’s not just my dreams that are important. The classroom is a shared space and we will need to create it together. The first step will be to ask students what they think the purpose of school should be and what they want to learn about while they spend their time here. I’ll need to listen to their voices and honour their truths if I want them to feel safe enough to advocate for themselves and for others.

Instead of having a list of goals for this year, I will choose to dream of possibilities. As Dugan reminds us, “Dreaming isn’t for the sake of dreaming. It spurs inspiration and new ideas as we help students build the skills necessary to turn hopes into realities.” There’s enough space in school for all of us to dream of the world that we want to live in.

It’s probably going to be slow. It’s probably going to be a lot of learning and growing together. It’s probably going to take a lot of trust in one another to build a place where our dreams can come true. But I think it’s going to be worth it.

Read Jamila Dugan’s article Radical Dreaming for Education Now on ASCD (https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/radical-dreaming-for-education-now)

Every summer there comes a point, in the middle of sunny slower-paced days, that I feel it. It usually happens in August, but sometimes sooner. It’s that little insistent feeling, as though someone is tapping my shoulder, gently nudging. September is coming, with all its excitement and challenges and learning ahead.

Over the break I usually centre on one area I want to brush up on, or even learn for the first time, to prepare for those first September days. Sometimes I just read up on these subjects on my own time, sometimes it’s more formal learning. Some years I have wanted to look into math, other years it has been social justice, or collaborative teaching … This year, it’s reading for multilingual language learners. 

Coincidentally, near the beginning of this summer, I heard a radio interview discussing phonics while driving to one of my schools. The child on the audio clip was trying to sound out a word, laboriously ploughing through, applying the phonics rules she had learned in an attempt to decode. Her tiny voice wobbled through all the correct sounds, a sweet staccato that let listeners know she had them all right, and would be able to blend them together into a word at any moment. I held the steering wheel and waited expectantly for it to click.

“Sa-sa-sa. Far-far. sa-fa-fa-r …. Safari!”

Her voice was jubilant on that last word. The letter sounds had finally come together and she realized in a flash, this was a word she knew. Safari! 

The radio guest who had brought the clip went on to describe that moment, the joy in reading, when students realize they can do it, decode and recognize a word, and from there begin to orthographically map it in their brains, and make meaning of the print on the page … It truly is an amazing moment. And I have some wonderings …

What if the student were a multilingual language learner, in the early stages of acquiring English? And what if that same student sounded out all the letters, applying all the phonics rules they have been taught (just as the child on the audio clip did) only to at last utter the word “safari” … and not know what the word “safari” means. No joy in recognizing the word, in realizing they know it … no increased understanding of the text …. no inclusion in the knowledge, enjoyment, and thinking processes inherent in reading that the child in the audio clip experienced. 

Earlier this year, I discussed some of the main considerations for literacy instruction for MLLs in my blog entry Equitable Phonics  including the importance of teaching and developing vocabulary and oral language, so that MLLs understand the words they are decoding.  With so many teaching resources now turning significant attention to the scope and sequence of phonics instruction, sometimes with little to no context for word meaning and oral language, I wonder how to make this process equitable for MLLs. How best to develop oral language and vocabulary alongside systematic phonics instruction, so that the process and purpose of reading is fully available to all students? How best to centre and affirm literacy development in first languages? After all, the benefits of doing so, as research tells us, are numerous and irreplaceable.

Wonderings are a constant in teaching, I think, and one of the ways pedagogical practice grows and responds to the needs and identities of students. So for my final blog of the year, I will end with these ones. May your own wonderings inspire fantastic journeys ahead.

And just like that, an entirely new and significantly changed Language curriculum was released near the end of June 2023, with the unrealistic expectation that teachers implement it in September of the same year. Similar to the roll-out of the Math curriculum in 2020, this sudden release of a critical curriculum document has left many educators anxious and wondering how they will implement an entirely new curriculum in such a short amount of time – with the same resources they have from the year before. As ETFO commented on June 20,  “ETFO members are not opposed to updates and improvements to the current Language curriculum; however, we need to call out a troubling pattern. This is the third major curricula that the government has rolled out since 2020 at the last minute, expecting educators to implement it in an unreasonably short timeframe and without adequate professional learning and supports.”

At the end of a school year where the impacts of underfunded schools were evident in the increasing incidents of violence in schools, the expectation of implementing new curriculum in the foundational area of literacy and language is mind-boggling.

The problems with having a rushed implementation of the Language curriculum go far beyond the investment of time educators will have to make to align their work with so many new changes. Language learning goals are usually embedded throughout the teaching day; in other words, how we teach subjects like social studies and science will be impacted as well. And as I mentioned before, there are few – if any –  new resources in classrooms to support implementation. 

As a parent of elementary aged children myself, I cannot help but share my disappointment that my kids will be part of the cohort of students that will be the recipients of such an underfunded and abrupt attempt to “enhance” their learning outcomes. While I am confident that their educators are going to put their best foot forward, I understand how challenging it will be to develop high quality lessons and learning plans over time, and confidence in what they are doing. ETFO states, “these changes are significant and educators need sufficient time, dedicated resources, and sustained professional learning opportunities to properly implement any new or revised curriculum. To support this, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is calling for a minimum two-year implementation period.”

Anecdotally, I can say that many of my colleagues have mixed feelings about the new curriculum. The Right to Read Report gave us a taste of what kinds of changes we could expect, such as the explicit teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics and the emphasis on decoding skills. My more experienced teacher colleagues are familiar and embrace the shift in literacy instruction, while many of my colleagues who are newer to the profession are embarking on a learning curve that is steep and challenging.  This would be less of an issue, of course, if educators could take the time to receive appropriate mentorship and training and and do the learning it takes to master something before implementing it en masse to students. Would you feel comfortable receiving services from someone who had just read the manual?

As an instructional resource teacher, I had the privilege of having the time to learn this year about elements of the new language curriculum, and though I did not know exactly what the curricula would look like, I worked with my colleagues to provide resources and professional learning experiences on building the literacy foundations of students, specifically English language learners. However, much of our efforts were weakened by chronic understaffing and the reality of classroom teachers dealing with extraordinary pedagogical challenges that are likely related not only to underfunding, but the aftermath of a life-altering pandemic. Rather than piling on more new professional learning, I strongly believe that educators need time to consolidate their learning and integrate all the new learning expectations and content changes in a meaningful way.

What Might Sustained Professional Learning Opportunities Look Like?

From an educator perspective, a new curriculum creates a significant change in our work flow since we must change – and in some cases transform – the way we work. In an ideal scenario, a new curriculum should be introduced through progressive phases that enable teachers to:

• explore the curriculum thoroughly
• acquire and develop resources and pedagogical strategies that support the new curriculum
• collaborate to determine which strategies work most effectively
• collaborate on instruction and assessment
• identify the best practices for supporting diverse students with a new curriculum

When educators have the time to explore, collaborate, and share ideas and best practices, students benefit from having quality instruction that leads to more equitable outcomes. When we don’t have the time to engage in professional learning and planning, much of that quality is lost when we are developing new lessons and resources right before the instruction happens: “building the plane as we are flying it”, in other words. We are currently witnessing the impact that occurred with the similarly released math curriculum, with stories of parents protesting the destreamed math course. Indeed, many boards are starting to introduce “bridge courses” in math to support grade 8 students as they transition to grade 9, in an effort to ensure students have the mathematical readiness to be successful in destreamed, academic math and English courses. Would it have been better for students if such supports were available at the time of the initial implementation? Quite likely.

Students in Ontario deserve more than needlessly abrupt changes to their learning.

Source: https://www.etfo.ca/news-publications/media-releases/rushed-language-curriculum

In the classroom, I spend a lot of time with my students on how they could choose books for independent reading. We go to the library or I set out our classroom library books and then we unpack the “IPICK” method from The Daily Cafe resource by Gail Boushey and Allison Behne. I love their framework for my literacy program and this method helps to give me the language to encourage children to make thoughtful reading choices. The acronym “IPICK” uses friendly language to elicit reflection when selecting books.

I – I choose a book (look it over inside and out)
P – Purpose (why do I want to read this book?)
I – Interest (does this book interest me?)
C – Comprehend (do I understand what I am reading?)
K – Know the words (do I know most of the words?)

I intentionally do a lot of modelling and practice with the students on how to select a book. For example, I show how I might open the book and read the first page to see if I understand the story; we talk a lot about what interests us (genres, topics, etc), and I model how I choose the same authors for my own reading choices; ones I know that I love their style or their genres. I do all of this to try and develop students’ desire to become lifelong readers and to have the skills to choose books that they will be able to feel successful reading.

Lately, I’ve been wondering whether my teaching does create lifelong readers; surely, the logistics of teaching students how to choose a book for themselves must make it easier to make a selection when looking at all of the vast possibilities that the library holds. Then why do I hear from parents the struggle to encourage their teens and pre-teens to read independently outside of school?

Recently, I read an Edutopia article by Kasey Short (https://www.edutopia.org/article/favorite-writers-middle-school) who was wondering the same thing. In this article, she writes that most engaging texts for upper elementary students:

– have the power to show early adolescent readers that they’re not alone in their feelings and circumstances
– provide positive examples for how readers can speak up for themselves and others
– offer understanding of those who are different from them
– provide insight into real-world situations
– serve as a mental health break and escape from the real world

This made sense to me and outlined some of the missing pieces in my thinking. I needed to think about the books that I was highlighting for students in my classroom. I needed to consider modelling my own, I’ll call them ‘emotional’ choices for reading as opposed to focussing on ‘practical’ choices for reading. Not just modelling the mechanics of looking at the first page to see if I could read the words, but thinking about what I think makes a book a ‘page turner’ for me and how that might change depending on my mood or interests. These criteria for engaging texts explain a little more explicitly the Purpose (why do I want to read this book?) and Interest (what do I want to learn about?) for which I was missing the language as a junior or intermediate educator.
As I begin planning for September, I keep these criteria in mind, and consider how to create space for these types of conversations about reading with students. Getting to know them as readers and helping them to reflect on their own identities as readers will be an interesting journey!