Happy (belated) Labour Day! This is an important day for all working people, who recognize and celebrate our collective history and power. Also a significant day for educators, for in reality it is the New Year’s Eve for the school year.
Leading up to this, I felt a bit nervous to meet my new class, but I had set up my classroom, and had submitted my order of supplies needed. I have ordered a large number of pencils.
This year, as with every year, I have shifted my classroom organization a bit, reflecting on what worked last year and what needed to change. I shifted the direction of my reading area, moved where I house chromebooks, and decluttered my games shelf. I also revised my Jobs board, which anchors a routine that is super important for my students and myself.
At the start of the year, I set up a container with popsicle sticks, each with a student’s name written on it. To select their job, I pull a popsicle stick and each child comes up and puts their name beside the job they want. Students are not allowed to have the same job for more than one two-week rotation in a row, but can revisit a job that they enjoyed. The student who picks last gets to pick first the next time jobs are selected.
The students like the approach because they get to choose the job they want and the order is random and therefore fair. Inevitably, some jobs are done well and consistently, while others are forgotten. I realized that student choice, while important, doesn’t necessarily create student responsibility.
Hence the shift: this year, I am changing three aspects of the Jobs system.
- Times of Day: I organized the Jobs into three categories: Morning, Throughout, and End of Day. This will allow me to prompt students to complete their jobs throughout the day and week. The goal is that as the kids become more accustomed to the expectations, the reminders will diminish (and I hope disappear).
- Practice: I am going to spend more time reviewing and practicing each job during the first week of school. This will provide an opportunity for the class to embed the culture of responsibility and contribution into our classroom norms.
- Scribe: I have added a new job: scribe. At the end of the day, the scribe will record on a posted piece of chart paper one or two things that happened that day with assistance from the class. At the end of the week, I will send some of these highlights home to parents. I decided to add this job because I wanted to have more student voice reflected in my communication home, and I wanted to make visible to everyone what we are learning and accomplishing on a daily and weekly basis.
The first week of school is important: students are figuring out teacher expectations, we are all getting to know each other, and the class is starting to build a supportive community. Just like Labour Day, launching the year with a strong understanding of how contributions are made collectively to benefit the common good is essential. Our next steps as a community will be to continue that work and understanding.