Beverly Papove Combined Grade Classes, Constant Learning, self reflection

Life is for Learning Curves

The view from the halfway mark of my first year teaching senior kindergarten is a lot different than it was just four months ago. Whereas I struggled every day in terms of how to implement the curriculum, now I am so much more comfortable in many, but not all, areas of the program. I hadn’t really taken the time to reflect on how I was feeling about my progress as a teacher and co-learner until, while chatting with my principal the other day, she asked me if I loved kindergarten. I hesitated, because I was thinking back to other grades I have taught, wondering if I had ever said that I loved teaching any of them. I realized, in forming my answer to her, that it is never really the curriculum of any given grade that I love teaching, but rather learning about my learners in order to be able to teach them is what I enjoy the most. I said to her that last term felt like ice-climbing, but now I am on a sort of a plateau – I can take a breath, look back proudly at where I came from, and look forward to how much I still need to learn. I most definitely have not mastered this grade, however, with the loop-de-loop learning curve I have been on this year, I am sure I will be a much better teacher next year.

That is what I was telling myself until recently when our school board confirmed its decision to integrate junior kindergarten with senior kindergarten next year. Even after having lived the senior kindergarten life for six months and feeling they could not be too dissimilar, I could not really tell you what goes on in a junior kindergarten classroom. That is why I am hoping that my principal will give me some coverage time to hang out in one of our JK classrooms to get a feel for the way the program is run and to see how the wee ones go through their day, as a way to help me imagine a blended classroom. Adding French Immersion will be another part of the picture – what will that look like? In-service workshops are to be part of the plan from the school board, and hopefully, so too is having quality time to work it all through with a supportive team of ECEs and teachers. Whereas this year, I was scrambling to make sense of it all as the newbie in the midst of a crew of seasoned kindergarten teachers and ECEs, next year, everyone will be trying to work things through. Life is indeed for learning curves.

Mike Beetham Assessment, Celebrating Success, Communication with Parents and Guardians, General, self reflection

Weekly News

I want to share with you an experiment gone really right. Over 2o years ago, a very good friend of mine and I started working with high-risk youth (Grade 6 -8) in our board in the summers. We had developed a program based around adventure-based learning. Our focus was to use the outdoors and physical challenges to assist them in developing social and self-regulation skills that would increase the probability of their success in school. One of the tools we developed was a Daily Newsletter (as we called it at that time) to inform families of their child’s progress as well as provide a summary of the days successes and occasional not so good outcomes. That one teaching tool has evolved over the last twenty years into what is now my Weekly Parent Book.

At the end of each week, at my classroom computer station I sit, look around my room and ask myself the following questions:

  1. How well did I meet the needs of each of my students?
  2. Did I make time to talk with each student on a one-to-one basis to find out how their life is going?
  3. Did I push too hard or not hard enough in moving them along their academic journey?
  4. What did I accomplish this week in literacy, numeracy etc.?
  5. What went well in Room 16 this week?
  6. What did not go well in Room 16 this week?
  7. How will I use that information to make the next week more successful for everyone?

That weekly routine has turned into one of the most rewarding and successful self-reflection tools I have ever had. Its initial, sole intent was to inform parents of what was going on in their child’s classroom. What it has become is a tool that I use to inform families, publish good news stories, share advice on how parents can help their child, updates on school-wide initiatives and most importantly, a tool to reflect on my week’s teaching.

It is a time that I actually use to decompress from the week’s events, look back in order to plan ahead for my next week and set goals of what I need to accomplish the following week (from a curriculum standpoint or what is needed to help specific students move forward). As the year progresses, the content of the weekly news becomes a shared work whereby students start to contribute to its production. That is when this tool becomes a very powerful learning tool for all of us.

Of course being the old school type, every Monday our morning circle starts with the sharing of the past week, goal setting using the feedback on that two-sided sheet of paper and then the ritual of adding it to their Parent Book to go home and be read and signed by an adult in their home. It goes home on Monday and is not due back until the following Monday to accommodate a wide variety of family scenarios and work schedules. The back of the page usually has some photograph that was taken during the week, an advice column, new goals for the class, a funny parent story or some other kind of important read for my families. At the end of the year it turns into a yearbook that can serve as a memory of their year. I still have all of my copies and when I need a little nostalgia fix all I have to do is go back and look through my career, year-by-year.

Weekly News