Day 128I recently attended a meeting in my building. It was designed to be a check-in with regular education and special education teachers collaborating in a co-teaching model. The facilitator of this meeting wanted to get a sense for how we were doing with our co-teaching model given that it is our second year of implementation. It was really helpful to pause and reflect. Given the time to think about this question, I'm taken aback by just how much easier this year is. This is not to say that last year was a struggle. It wasn't. I really enjoy working with the teacher who is the special educator in my room. Given that we now have a greater appreciation for each other's style, personalities, idiosyncrasies, etc., we're just firing on all cylinders this year. I appreciate how we've grown together and I know our students will benefit from our ability to effectively collaborate.
At some point, the facilitator started asking us some very focused questions. Questions about lesson delivery, shared responsibilities of assessment and planning, etc. started to make me feel a little judged. For example, the teacher-facilitator does not believe in whole-class instruction. She uses station teaching with leveled groups. When we spoke about a child's difficulty attending during a ten-minute whole-class lesson, she patiently explained that her small group lessons make it easier for students to attend and that our principal and superintendent really do prefer station teaching. My hair started to stand up on the back of my neck. Now, I love small group instruction. It is a treat to be able to work with 2-3 children on a specific skill. However, research points to the fact that when group sizes increase to sizes much larger than 2-3, the benefit decreases. I am not a fan of using station teaching exclusively or even using it quite often. I have a really good reason for this. When kids are stuck in leveled groups they never have an opportunity to stretch. For example, those bright kids. let's call them "eagles" never have to break down their steps or really simplify their process so that it makes sense to a variety of learners. This is an important skill that students will need as they move into higher grades and their careers. Equally concerning is when students are in leveled groups with few peers, they get to hear very few of their classmates' viewpoints. When students are denied access to higher level thinking we begin to have an equity problem in the classroom. Here is what I do believe: Students can learn from short whole-class lessons when the instruction is high quality. When a teacher has good command of both content and pedagogy, whole-class instruction can ensure that all students have access to the same rigorous curriculum. Honestly, when instruction is delivered in manageable chunks (ten minutes) nearly all students can learn and make progress toward proficiency. Parallel teaching, when I take half of the class and my co-teacher takes half, is a nice tool to use when we want to provide instruction and need to monitor closely for understanding. Also, the use of smaller groups may make it easier for some students to actively participate. Getting your voice in the room is sometimes easier when the group is smaller. I wouldn't rely on parallel teaching for all instruction because I really do believe that students benefit from being part of a larger conversation. I LOVE using one-to-one instruction! There is NOTHING more meaningful than sitting beside a child, teaching him or her a concept and then listening to the child to deeply understand where he or she is with the learning. Asking open questions helps me to better understand the depth of a student's understanding. I use this model as often as I possibly can especially for assessment. However, in a class of 22, I won't be able to get to all students often enough to rely on this model to deliver instruction. What I do not believe in is leveled instruction. I just don't. I'm not against pulling a couple of student for some discrete skill instruction because both seem to have the same gap. I'm not at all for putting a kids in a group that will mold their identity. Some students actually go off to college remembering that they were once a "bluebird" and that actually still means something! I hate leveled groups because they limit students' access to the curriculum and to challenge. I don't know what more to say about this. I just hate them! In the end, I felt like this meeting turned into an inquisition versus an offering of support. I did feel a little judged even though the facilitator repeated time and time again that there was no judgement. Still, I feel great about the direction of our co-teaching model. I'm proud of how far we've come. I look forward to the journey ahead. And, I am actively puting this meeting behind me.
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Day 127An individual education plan assures that students with special needs receive the educations they deserve. Sometimes the plans outline accommodations that have to be made so that a child can access the curriculum. Sometimes, there are modifications needed. More often than not, at least in my opinion, the instruction outlined in an IEP is simply best practice. It is what all kids deserve. All kids deserve frequent check-ins, models, tasks chunked from time to time, preferential seating, and untimed assessments. Sometimes, students require specialized instruction that takes them out of the classroom. Providing the least restrictive environment possible is always the mission at the outset. It just doesn't always happen that a child's needs can be met in an inclusive setting. Once it is determined that a child has special needs, the plan is developed with a team of educators including special and regular educators as well as the child's parents. Goals are developed so that we can measure the effectiveness of the plan we've developed. If I'm being honest, sometimes the goals developed limit a child. Sometimes the goals are so specific and the benchmarks so foreign from what the child's peer group typically experiences in the classroom that the child who is on an iep has an experience that is quite different from his or her peers. Sometimes, an overemphasis on procedures in math and easy to measure skills in language arts has students focusing on low-level skills for a disproportionate number of minutes each days. When educators are collecting data on benchmarks related to these basic goals, they're apt to design instruction that is low level too. What is worse, in order to demonstrate proficiency in meeting these goals, students are sometimes deprived the opportunity to participate in the higher level learning experiences enjoyed by their peers. While I completely understand the need for instruction that fills gaps in student learning and provides for the acquisition of basic skills, our students who have IEPs deserve access to the higher-level instruction that their peers have access to. I don't think there are easy solutions to the problem of devaluing higher level learning experiences in favor of bridging gaps for our most vulnerable students. I don't have it all figured out. I do know the very IEPs that are designed to provide equity and level the playing field sometimes cause students to fall further behind. This is a problem. The larger problem is how kids end up feeling about themselves. Kids know. They 100% realize when they are being treated differently. They can tell when we don't believe in them and their abilities. I don't know exactly how to fix this problem but the idea of just-in-time remediation versus instruction on the perimeter of the classroom or in a separate setting seems like a good place to start. I just don't buy that kids on with an IEP aren't capable. Instead, I'm often wonder if they just haven't had the same rick learning experiences their peers have had. And, if they have, I wonder if they were ready for those experiences. I want the kids in my room to have top notch, rich learning experiences. I'm wondering how this can happen given the current limitations due to IEPs. At the very least, our students deserve for us to be thinking long and hard about what we can do to solve this problem. Day 12618 Times a week someone shows up at my classroom looking to take a student or students out for pull out instruction. The counselor, an occupational therapist, and adaptive PE teacher, a Wilson reading instructor, a physical therapist, and two special educators. There isn't a single day or even half day when a child isn't being pulled out. This is difficult for so many different reasons.
First, the most important thing I do at the beginning of a school year is build classroom culture. This is really hard to do with you seldom have all of your students in class. It is hard to build teams of students when everytime students practice teamwork members of each team are missing. It is also extraordinarily challenging for students to learn classroom routines when their routine is changing every day do to their pull out schedule. So while I'm teaching most students to take their lunch and jackets to specials class, I'm teaching others to grab those things as they head out for OT because they'll go directly to special from there. One of the most challenging things is scheduling the truly special events that unfold in the classroom. These events obviously include holiday parties and cultural arts events as well a special guest visits. However, their are a plethora of other events that kids don't want to miss. They never want to miss #classroombookaday. I swear, when they return from a session, they come into the room and immediately check out the bulletin board to see if they've missed it. When they see that a new book jacket has been added to the bulletin board, their face falls. I try to lesson the blow by putting the day's picture book into his or her book box so that it can be enjoyed during Daily Cafe. There are special lessons in math too. Sometimes it is a Math in 3 Acts lesson or a favorite routine that is missed. It isn't avoidable but that doesn't mean that it feels okay either. It feels crappy. The other very real challenge is keeping kids caught up. There is no down time during the school day so how exactly am I supposed to get a kids caught up who misses critical whole-class instruction during math class. How do I ensure that the kid who missed the chapters we read in reading class has an opportunity to read those chapters before we move on tomorrow. Assigning missed work is not an option. I won't punish kids with homework for being pulled out of class. We figure it out, we make it work. But let's be clear, these kids are missing out. They are missing out when they're pulled out and they're missing out when we catch them up. They don't get choice during Daily Cafe. They have to get caught up on missed reading or writing. They don't get choices during math practice time either. There are seldom fun games to build fluency and provide practice for them, when kids get to make choices during math class these kids get caught up . At times, when there is no other option, I have the kids pulled out AGAIN during "less important" instructional moments. It is just crap. I just don't know how to fix it. Day 125Today was Halloween. It was a long and challenging day. My students were fine. They were typical fourth-graders on Halloween. There was a parade at school and there was a small class party where we shared some treats and watched Charlotte's Web (we just finished the book and, as I do every year, I wept as I read aloud the second to last chapter. I'm predictable.). I had an IEP meeting in the afternoon (on Halloween). Tomorrow, we'll begin our day with our monthly staff meeting. There is homework to do prior to the staff meeting. Plus, I have school work that HAS TO BE DONE TONIGHT. There is no way around it. I am exhausted. I want nothing more than sleep. I survived Halloween. There is little else to say tonight. The dinosaure pictured above is actually one of my students. This actually happened today. That is all. Day 124I had a meeting with a group of third and fourth-grade teachers during my prep today. The topic discussed was co-teaching. The mentor in our group wanted to know how she could continue to support our efforts. There were many questions asked. At times, I felt like I was being interviewed and tested. I felt a little "under the microscope". We've actually come a long way. In terms of our mutual practice, we've done a lot of meeting in the middle. My special educator counterpart has done a lot to convince me that some kids do need supports, scaffolds, and references to succeed. While these references may be necessary at the outset, we can work to diminish the students' reliance on them. Meanwhile, I've convinced her that a lot of the instruction that our special education students require can be provided in-the-moment and that these students need not always be separated from their peers to receive explicit instruction. There has been a lot of meeting in the middle.
When the meeting had concluded, we headed back to my classroom where the conversation moved toward productive struggle. I shared that while an adult might come in my room when children are working on a task and observe me standing on the sidelines while students struggle, I am not doing so because I'm a lazy teacher. It actually takes tremendous self control to NOT step in and organize my student's work on a task. I shared that it is really difficult for me when an adult working in my room, in an effort to "help" the students and appear hard-working, steps in and takes the lead. I know that they are doing so with the best of intentions. I also know that as they're stepping in to save the day, they are likely wondering why the heck I'm doing nothing to help. My choice to stand back is intentional. Getting started is hard for kids. Making sense of the task and breaking it into workable chunks is sometimes more challenging than the task itself. When I step in and do this important work FOR the students I take away their power. The struggle is worth it. While they are struggling they are developing organizational skills, comprehension, and the ability to pace out a task. Executive function challenges don't improve when I do the work for my students. When it get's MESSY, I stand back. I hold my ground. Sometimes, kids get frustrated with one another. Sometimes the way they treat each other lacks patience or kindness. I stand my and wait. Here is what happens while I wait. Students sometimes figure things out for themselves. Sometimes they dive in and do it all wrong and realize that work doesn't have to be a slam dunk and that it can be reworked. Sometimes they get so frustrated that they come to me and learn the POWER of self-advocacy. Sometimes, when one student barks, another barks back and learns to stand up for oneself. Sometimes students learn that if they listen to one another more and try to lead less, that the path to success becomes more clear. Students learn to become self-reliant and they learn which of their peers they can rely on. How much of this would they have learned if I stepped in to take the lead? Trust me, I don't let it get ugly. Learning shouldn't leave a scar. I step in before the tears of frustration fall. I step in before kids get outright mean. I just don't mess with the kids while they're sorting out the messy parts. And when I do step in, I coach a little. I don't lead. I nudge. I ask kids about their thinking. I ask them why they're thinking what they're thinking. Sometimes, prompting a child to think out loud is all the prompting needed. Standing on the sidelines is hard work. Not doing the hard work of leading the way for kids is hard work. Stepping aside so that our students can see their own ability to do hard work can be hard work. So, yeah, it looks like I'm working less hard. It is far more important that I work less hard and my students work harder. The hard work of working less hard is worth the work! Day 123That is right! It is official. I am one third the way to my goal. On the one hand, I can't believe I have written 122 posts! On the other hand, I can't believe I have 245 left to go! That seems really overwhelming. I will have to write posts over the holidays and over February vacation when I'll be on a ski vacation. What was I thinking?
The bigger question is: Is this worthwhile? The sad answer is: I have no idea. You would think, 122 posts in, I'd be feeling some of the rewards of this reflection. I really don't know if it is impacting my practice all that much. I have definitely read more as sometimes, I need some inspiration. I definitely think that the blog has forced me to pause and reflect on the learning happening in my room. It has also forced me to take stalk of what I'm doing well and where I need to grow. I'm just not sure it is making any real difference. I do know that sometimes it kills me to write these posts. At least it does initially. There aren't all that many occasions when I'm jonesing to come home at the end of the day, feed my family, run my kids around to their extra curricular, do my planning, my grading, communicate with parents, clean my house, and wrap up whatever chores or errands I have, and THEN sit down to write. However, once I get going, once the first few sentences are down, the writing generally flows. What is worth noting is that when you're writing with no audience there is less stress. I do proofread. So often though, I'm writing late at night and the proofreading, bleary-eyed and all, is fairly useless. Whenever I revisit older posts, I find a plethora of errors. I've had to let that go. Generally, I tend to be a perfectionist. I've had to let that go a little. Also, sometimes life happens, I get tired, and I fall behind. I have to give myself permission to fall behind and then somehow motivate myself to get caught up. There are times when I think, "this is it, I'm probably done." But then, for some reason, I'm able to forge ahead. My kids have been great about motivating me. They definitely aren't reading this blog but they often ask me what post I'm on or try to guess. Whenever I'm struggling to keep up, they encourage me. It really is helpful. So, I'm 1/3 the way toward reaching my goal of blogging and reflecting about my practice as a teacher for 365 days. I'm honestly not sure I'll make it to the finish line. Still, I'm proud to have made it this far. Day 122The Boston Red Sox won the World Series tonight. I was scrolling through FaceBook as I watched the game and here is a true fact: the kids were all up watching the big game.
Holy crap, the next few days could be hard. Let's just summarize for a moment. We enjoyed a beautiful FULL MOON at the tail end of last week. Then there were five LATE Sox games for the children to enjoy. The Pats will play the Buffalo Bills tomorrow night and that game will likely wrap up well after 11:00. And Wednesday is FREEKIN' Halloween! Then we teachers will need to rest up over the weekend because next week is conference week! I feel like we should get some kind of combat pay for weeks like these! So the big question today...should the parents of nine and ten year olds, given the possible consequences, allow their children to stay up and watch these sporting events? My answer may surprise you. YES! In almost every circumstance, I say, YES! Here is why: The year was 1986. The Sox were chasing down a World Series title. We were playing the NY Mets. I grew up in Worcester and Worcester's own Rich Gedman was in as the catcher. Our Red Sox were sooo close to putting an end to the curse of the Bambino! I was an eighth-grade parochial school student at the time and my parents let me stay up to watch the games. I remember how special that experience was. I remember watching with my dad. I will always have that memory. Memories and the experiences we have with the people we love form our lives. The goal of education, according to this fourth-grade teacher, is to equip our students with the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to live their best life. I just don't think anyone should put off living their lives, including children. So when do I say a child shouldn't stay up? The student who doesn't care about sports, whose family could care less too, should definitely get to bed. He or she will need the extra sleep. After all, when they wake in the morning, they will be confronted by a bunch of fans who are ecstatic or devastated and exhausted. Dealing with these fanatics will require a lot of patience! Day 121Oh Alfie! You nailed it again in your New York Times opinion piece titled, "Science Confirms It: People Are Not Pets". It is worth the read and Alfie Kohn's writing is entertaining to boot. In short, he wonders aloud about rewards and why so many of us insist on using them to motivate students and employees. He presents a compelling amount of research that proves that rewards do not motivate students or employees and can actually have the opposite effect. In fact, offered rewards, students often become less interested in the task that they were being rewarded to complete.
I read another article recently in Education Week, titled "Why Doesn't Every Teacher Know The Research on Reading Instruction?" This article touted the importance of phonics-based reading instruction. The article spoke in favor of using commercially published reading curriculums versus teacher designed curriculums. While that is a subject for another time, there is a common theme here. There is a fair amount of research available to educators and ed. leaders yet we often ignore the research and forge ahead doing our own thing. Teaching really is a personal affair. I remember being asked to write my educational philosophy in undergrad and again as I pursued my Master's degree. Given over two decades of experience now, I wonder about that practice. Depending on the district you are employed by, your own educational philosophy has little to do with your every day practice. What makes this even more challenging for educators, especially elementary educators, is that ed. leaders, who come and go, can influence major shifts in pedagogy and curriculum. While some leaders work at soliciting teacher buy in, others make unilateral changes with little regard for the teaching staff. I say, especially elementary educators, because, as generalists, it seems to be assumed that we are not content experts and need a tremendous amount of support in order to deliver our content effectively. Hence all the pre-packaged curriculums purchased with the intention of making teaching more uniformed and comprehensive at the elementary level. Given all the mandates to follow this curriculum or that one with fidelity, there really is little to do with our own educational philosophies. Well, yes, I still believe all children can learn and that piece of my philosophy still guides my practice but the rest has been made largely irrelevant as there is not a lot of choice left for me as an educator. But let's return to the research. It is easier to embrace a rather dry reading curriculum that is well supported, at least in the primary grades, by research. It is really hard to embrace a social/emotional learning curriculum that is not in line with my philosophy and is not at all supported by research. It is even harder to embrace this when I've never had behavior or engagement problems in my classroom before. Maybe there is a boat load of research, in conflict with the research presented by Alfie Kohn, that supports the use of such rewards-based SEL curriculums. I'm just not aware of it. In the meantime, I'll plod along with this new curriculum. My heart won't really be in it but I will comply (with a smile). That is, I have to comply until the next ed. leader changes my course. Day 120During the summer months, when I was in the early days of my commitment to this blog, I wondered about student self-reflection and what I could do to help students become more reflective. In the end, it is really hard to add to the school day. A constant frustration of mine is how challenging it is to get it all in given the four hours of instructional time I have each day. Yes, the kids are in school from 9:00 to 3:30 but so much of that day is gobbled up my specials, recess, lunch and arrival/dismissal procedures. By the time the kids come in and take care of morning procedures, pledge and announcements take place, it is nearly nine thirty. The kids head off to their specialists at 11:55 and return from recess and lunch at 1:30. On Tuesdays, we lose the kids to KCR for social emotional/social skills instruction and chorus. That means that on Tuesdays, we only have 2 hours and 45 minutes of instructional time with our students! Chipping away additional minutes dedicated to self reflection seems like a big ask.
Nonetheless, I have found a little slice of time for self reflection. Each day, we wrap up our science and social studies instruction at 3:00 so that we can get the kids packed up for the end of the day at 3:10 when walkers and bus students start getting dismissed. When my students return to the classroom, they work on their highlight reel right away and then begin packing up. The students use their student planners which are purchased by our school's PTO. The planners are intended to be used by students as a place to record their nightly homework. I don't assign homework so repurposing the planners for self-reflection seemed like a super idea. There isn't a ton of space for the students to write which is actually great because filling the space isn't overwhelming. The students are simply asked to write about the most memorable moments of their day. As I review the highlight reels, I am able to quickly see what has impacted students. My students write about the learning experiences that have mattered to them. Generally, the experiences that make their highlight reels are also the same teaching moments that seem meaningful to me. On occasion though, I am struck my how something that is seemingly small makes a child's highlight reel. Oftentimes, it is the one on one teaching moments that make the reel. Students appreciate the individual attention that they receive. The highlight reel is also a great tool for eliciting a conversation about the student's day at home. I think that even the most engaged student can be at a loss for words when questioned about their day at the dinner table. By then, exhaustion has set in and the school day seems like a part of the child's distant past. Having a handful of sentences to cue up the conversation can be helpful. Parents are sincerely interested in what is happening during their child's school day. Having this little cheat sheet to spark the conversation is helpful. At the end of term, I think that it will be fascinating for students to review their highlight reels and see if they can make some generalizations. Do they really enjoy hands on experiences in math and science? Do they like research? Are they most engaged when learning is personal? Giving students opportunities to learn about themselves as students seems like a great use of our time. So far, this is a five minute (max.) investment and it seems absolutely worth it! Day 119We are participating in the #classroombookaday challenge. Our goal is to read 180 picture books this school year. We're well on our way. We've read 36 so far. The books I've selected are pretty diverse. Some of the books are silly, while some are rather serious. The kids look forward to this special time each day. Many have gone so far as to say that #classroombookaday is their favorite thing about fourth-grade. Some of the books I pick are selected for very specific reasons. For example, we read, Picture Day Perfection on picture day. Other books are chosen because I just love them and I'm eager to share them with my students. My students are not living and being educated in a particularly diverse community so some books are selected to increase their awareness and to help them experience diversity if only through the characters who live on the pages of a book. A few have been read because kids have requested them. Still others are selected for no real reason. I love reading funny books to my students. Listening to their giggles is pure joy. I love when a silly book surprises them and I get to look up and see expressions of wonder and excitement. Kids love to laugh and teaching them that books can be fun and elicit laughter is a wonderful byproduct of #classroombookaday. Every once in a while I ask the students to name a few of their favorite books read so far this year. I'm often surprised that the silly books don't make their lists of favorites as much as the serious ones do. Today I read a book titled, Tomas and the Library Lady. This is the tale of the son of migrant farm workers. This family includes two parents, a grandfather, and Tomas. They have moved from Texas to Iowa as they often do to secure work on a farm. This boy, who loves his grandfather's stories, wanders into a library in search of more stories. Greeted warmly by a librarian, who takes him under her wing, Tomas becomes transported by all the stories at his fingertips. He begins to emerge as his family's storyteller. Let's be clear, there is not a ton for my students to relate to in Tomas' tale. He is an eight-year-old child but aside from that, his life is foreign to them. Still, as I read this book to them today, they seemed to be in a trance. They hung on every word. When I was finished, I asked them the same question I often ask, "What did you think?" The first child who shared said, "I just loved it. This is my new favorite. May I have this book for my book box?" Many children echoed a similar fondness for the book. They loved the warmth of the illustrations. They picked up on the fact that the mother in the story, thankful for the librarian's attention to her son, baked a dessert as a gift of thanks. They noticed that this family was so grateful that they gave from their need which was truly generous.
my students to understand what life as a Mexican migrant farm working family felt like. is one of the greatest gifts of #classroombookaday.
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Marie McManus BrighamA public school teacher who gets to wonder alongside fourth-graders. Archives
December 2018
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