Hickman Here I Come!

I am so sad to be moving on from my first placement into my second--I love my kids!  I love my mentor teacher!  I love teaching full-time!  Alas, I know that all of that is preaching to the choir.

Regardless, I am simultaneously excited to start my new placement at Hickman.  Dr. Henrie has told me wonderful things about my new mentor teacher which make me so excited to meet him.  First of all, he is a male kindergarten teacher--that is something you don't see every day!  Also, he is apparently unconventional in his teaching methods and even brings his guitar to school.  That is perfect for me, given that I spent much of my previous placement singing "eyes on me" to my students.

Additionally, I sent my mentor teacher my introductory letter and he responded with greater engagement than I had ever anticipated.  He not only read my resume but also referenced how my skills could be beneficial in his classroom.  He assuaged my fears about never having taught Kindergarten before AND he gave me exact directions to his classroom, including where to park and who to speak to in the school office.  His attention to detail has me incredibly excited for this upcoming placement--I think I am going to learn so much.

That being said, I was wondering if any of you who were at Hickman during this first placement had any insights or suggestions before I go there at the end of this week?  Is there anything you can tell me about what I should anticipate?  I know that none of you were in Kindergarten at Hickman, but I already consider you experts on the school. :)

Unavoidable Religion

Something I have been noticing over the course of the semester is that my class was surprisingly Christian-oriented for such a diverse group of students.  One of the main things that brought this to my attention was how nearly every morning message discussion we had circled back to Jesus and God.  From the first day I took over morning meeting, I tried to use that time as an outlet for students to express themselves kindly and learn respect for one another.  They rarely have time to talk during school and I wanted them to be able to open up to me and their classmates without fear of shushing or punishment.

The first day that God was brought up during morning meeting was easy to avoid because only one student had mentioned it.  I simply went on to the next student who was telling me about his weekend.  However, over time, the discussions became more and more detailed until the day when my students were discussing whether or not Jesus died for our sins.  My mentor teacher never stepped in to break up the conversation, which made me feel like maybe I was overreacting.

That being said, I had always heard that teachers are not supposed to advocate their beliefs to their students because it might appear to be preaching or giving undue influence.  I did not want to be caught in that situation even though I am proudly Christian.  I agreed with what many of my students said and wanted to correct things that they had misunderstood from the Bible.  Instead, I found myself consistently saying: "some people believe that..."  After the discussion about Jesus dying for our sins, one of my students came up to me in the hallway and asked if I was a Christian and believed in God.  I told him yes because I didn't want to lie and then told him that I didn't want to talk about it in depth because I didn't want anyone to feel that their personal beliefs were unwelcome in our classroom.

After that, the topic didn't come up again, but I started wondering what I would do in this situation in my future classroom.  Legally, what are my obligations as a public schoolteacher?  How can I share my life with my students without sharing information about what I believe?  How can I try not to influence my students' beliefs when sharing my own?  Oftentimes students model their thoughts and opinions after their teachers and I never want to be told by angry parents that I am indoctrinating their kids.  So, I am continuing to puzzle over this.  Have any of you encountered religion-based issues thus far in your placements?  If so, what have you done to deal with them?

To grade or not to grade

Hello, everyone!  This past week I spent almost the entirety of one of my snow days grading student work.  Granted, I had not realized how much of it had piled up, but still; it took me around five hours!  All of that time I spent assessing had me thinking about how much my teacher wants grades for little-taught subjects like science and social studies.  Two easy quiz grades often make up my students' entire semester grade for science.  The time I spent grading also had me thinking about how Metro encourages their teachers to grade and I wanted to pose some questions that were persisting in my mind.

First of all, part of the reason it took me so long to grade my students' work was that I was assessing them using a rubric that had several components to it.  I spent a great deal of time reading through their work, analyzing how much they actually understood about fractions, and trying to fit their responses into my rubric's scale.  At times, I felt that I was being overly punitive because some of the students who worked hard received a low score.  At first glance, anyone would think that their work was better than that of their peers.  But, based on the rubric I created, they scored poorly because they  had omitted important features.  I know that we have read many articles about the benefits of performance assessments, but do you have any ideas for how we could shorten grading time required?  Additionally, do you have any suggestions for how to remove the nitpicking tendency of rubrics without creating an overly-subjective grading system?

In the same vein, I have been frustrated throughout my placement by the scaling breakdown my teacher (and all of Metro) uses.  It seems perfectly fair when you first examine the breakdown:
F - 0%-59%
D - 60%-69%
C - 70%-79%
B - 80%-89%
A - 90% +

However, when the students are given short quizzes with ten or fewer questions, it soon becomes impossible to give fair grades with this percentage-letter correlation.  I gave a few quizzes with 5-8 questions on them because I did not want to take too much of my students time.  However, if a student missed one question on a five-question quiz, they are automatically reduced to a B.  If they miss two, they are downgraded to a D.  D and lower is failing.  So if they make two mistakes, they've failed.  How is that justified or fair?  And how can I justify giving my students longer and more emotionally taxing tests just so that they have a better chance of grading higher?

My last question about grading is based on something that my teacher told me.  She said that the special education teacher forbade them from giving failing grades to their students with learning disabilities.  However, if the students do not have much of a differentiated IEP (e.g. one of my students just requires extra time and things read aloud to her) and they are failing because of their learning disability, how do you justify that in your grading?  I already have a hard enough time giving ten-year-olds a failing grade, but how can you radically alter your grading parameters for special needs students without feeling like you are downgrading your other students?  I know that we need to provide equitable education, but I am a loss to see how that relates directly to grading and students' input of effort.

Kids Say the Darned-est Things

     Yesterday, my mentor teacher mentioned to me that a parent had emailed her recently asking about conversations concerning sexuality potentially taking place at school. He asked her if that was something that we had talked about, or noticed being talked about, in the classroom – particularly the topic of gay marriage. Of course, sexuality is NOT something (obviously) that we bring up in the classroom with kindergarteners, and neither of us had heard anything like that being discussed amongst our students. 

     However, today as the kindies were doing their morning work, I walked past a table that was a-buzz with conversation. These five- and six-year-olds were happily cutting their sight word morning work while discussing whether or not two men could marry each other. They were curiously asking each other and trading information on whether or not they believed that was allowed, what it would be like, the possibility of children for this imaginary couple, etc. Not knowing what to do in this situation, I tried to re-direct them by saying something along the lines of, “Hey, friends. Let’s try to focus on finishing our morning work! You won’t get anything done by chatting right now!” Of course, I was met with the practical response by one of the kids, “But we are working and talking at the same time. We aren’t going slow!” – and with this they resumed their conversation. 

     Not knowing what to do, I asked my mentor teacher for help, and she went over and told them that that kind of conversation was not appropriate for school, and if they had questions they should really ask their parents when they were at home. 

     I was so confused and embarrassed. First of all, it was clear that they had a lot of misconceptions, and I almost wanted to butt in and just have an open conversation with them. However, I knew that this truly WASN’T an appropriate conversation for the classroom, ESPECIALLY with kindergarteners, and I was totally thrown off by not knowing the right way to handle it right off the bat. I was embarrassed that I had to resort to asking my mentor teacher to handle the situation, especially when her response to them seemed so obvious. I was embarrassed by the situation in general, because clearly this was the same conversation before that had spurned the previously-mentioned parent’s email. It was just uncomfortable all around, and something that honestly was so unexpected when I went into student teaching.

Little Geniuses

     We are about to have a data meeting at school and I am overwhelmed. We are going over our most special friends - ones with needs that exceed general classroom expectation, both big and small and on both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, we are making sure that all of our students are achieving at least at grade level, and discussing accommodations to be made for students particularly struggling to meet their goals. On the other hand, we are looking over students who are high-achieving to evaluate whether or not we think they are a good fit for the district's pull-out program for gifted students, ENCORE.

     Currently, 3 of our kindergarteners are already in ENCORE, and are removed from class once a week to meet for pull-out. Recently, a parent approached my teacher about her son testing for ENCORE, and my mentor teacher was taken aback. Little did she know that this was just the first to come for many requests by parents for their children. We have had so many requests of kids that are perfectly wonderful – but not necessarily above level. The uncomfortable thing is that teacher’s are required to give their input, and my mentor teacher is stuck in an awkward place with more than one student where she doesn’t have a lot to say. I love the fact that there is so much growth and student achievement at Lockeland – it is clearly a great school full of really caring and involved parents and gifted children. However, sometimes it seems a little excessive looking at all the kids that qualify for ENCORE in each grade! I don’t know a lot about ENCORE, and I would be really interested to hear from any of y’all that have had a little more experience with it, but to me it seems that if the whole school is gifted – shouldn’t we just be pushing them more in the regular classroom. Most of the parents that called my teacher asking to get their kid tested did so after hearing of another student in the class that was already in ENCORE, and it ended up seeming a lot like a competition instead of an accommodation for students on the gifted end of the spectrum. There was a really similar program in my school district growing up, and it was honestly one of the best things about elementary school, so I’m not saying that ENCORE is a bad thing. I just am curious about how to deal with all of the little obstacles that accompany it.

PrinciPAL

     So. I have reached the point in my placement where I have developed a pretty good report with my mentor teacher and the teachers on my team – they are comfortable sharing their experiences and anecdotes with me and vis versa, including even things from their personal lives. I have never felt uncomfortable with this, until pretty recently. 

     My grade level team eats lunch together in the library most days, and recently, one of the teachers was about to have her observation from the principal. I have only ever had great interactions with our principal – she has been incredibly welcoming and kind to me as well as the other student teachers, and during the faculty meetings I was excited to see how much she favored innovation and shared experiences. However, there seemed to be a pretty tangible tone of negativity when she was brought up during lunch. Ever since she was brought up a couple days ago, there seems to be a pretty blatant common thread in most of our ‘casual’ conversation. On one occasion, my mentor teacher was telling us that her husband’s school was getting a new principal, and there was a comment about the possibility of my placement getting a new principal and how great that would be. On another occasion the next day, another one of the team members brought up a joke about the principal that seemed a little off-color.

     On all of these occasions, I have just kept my mouth shut. And all of these occasions have never been out-right enough for me to classify them as rude, disrespectful, or even mean. However, it is really uncomfortable for me to not really have the same understanding as the rest of the teachers in my grade-level and still be listening to these types of comments. I guess what I’m saying is, what should I be doing in these types of situations besides not saying anything? Nothing? Should I be nervous for my principal’s opinion of me? Does she realize that this group of teachers might not think as favorably of her? Is that a poor reflection of me in her eyes? It makes me very nervous.

First Week of School!

     Let me just preface this by saying I wrote all my blog entries in a Word Document because of confusion with the link, so I'm about to have multiple entries that seem anachronistic!

     Lockeland is the most amazing place in the world. I am immediately so in love with my first placement. 

     My mentor teacher could not be more engaging, brilliant, and encouraging. I just found out she was most recently named teacher of the year – and it shows. She has already made me feel so welcomed. Every question I have thrown her way – even about the most peculiar, small things and at random times – she has answered with sage poise. Though this environment is clearly privileged, she is constantly checking in on the big and small needs of her students. AND YET, every thing she does seems to be so fluid and obvious. She does not take hours and hours before and after school to plan and prepare for the next day, she doesn’t have a ton of extra work that she takes home every night, she is raising two small children (a 1 year old and a child in pre-K), and she does not flinch in the face of new ideas and innovation. I wonder, how long does it take to get to this point? She’s been teaching for twelve years, and things seemed to have just unfolded perfectly for her. I wonder if I will ever reach this point!

      It seems like this is the best kind of teacher: one that has the wisdom from years of experience that creates fluidity in her teaching and problem solving, but also has the flexibility and open-mindedness of someone who is fresh on the scene. I wonder if this is achievable sooner than twelve years in? And how do you achieve this balance? Is it simply due to the nature of the amount of time she has put in to teaching as a profession? Or is it a mental choice? Or probably, some combination of those?

Reflection & Goals

As I'm working on my edTPA and reflecting on my first placement and the lessons I taught, I've been thinking about some of the lessons I learned that I want to keep in mind moving forward. I'm setting a few goals for myself for my second placement:

1. Ask more questions!!! I hate to say this, but I think I missed a lot of learning opportunities by not asking all the questions that popped into my head during my first placement. There were so many things that I didn't ask my FM or other teachers, either because it wasn't the right time and I forgot later, or because I just thought it was a stupid question (like, what is SIOP?? I should know that, right? But I don't). I think I was so focused on the "teaching" part of student teaching and trying to seem professional, that it was easy to forget that I'm still a student, too, and I need to be learning these kinds of things as I go. I'm going to make a point of asking my next FM as many questions as possible, big or small, to make sure I'm maximizing the opportunity for myself and learning as much as possible.
2. Force myself to have my lesson plans and materials ready 24 hours in advance. Yep, this is a requirement. Am I the only one who had trouble sticking to it? :\ Sometimes, it wasn't really "my fault" and there was no way I could write the lesson plan more than a day ahead of time for whatever reason, but a lot of the time, it was me procrastinating. At first I thought the "24-hour rule" was for the FMs' benefit, and mine didn't seem to mind just talking about each day's lessons the morning of. But I finally realized I was doing myself a disservice by getting behind, because I probably missed out on some valuable feedback that I could have gotten if my FM had more time to review my lessons. That, and I maybe would've gotten more sleep if I'd made a habit of staying one step ahead of myself. So, moving forward into my second placement, I'm going to do everything in my power to stay ahead, and make it a habit for when I have my own classroom.
3. Stop saying "um" when I'm teaching. You know when you watch yourself teaching on video and some things just make you cringe? This was it for me. Must stop.

What were some of the biggest lessons y'all learned from your first placement? What are your goals moving forward?

Second Placement Nerves!

I can't believe it's already been half a semester! I have gotten so close with my mentor teacher and my class, and so into the routine of my first placement that I'm anxious to start a new one! I'm sure many of you who have middle school or departmentalized classes can relate to this, but I'm anxious to go a full day in one contained classroom. I know it's a very different experience, and it's going to be a big adjustment in terms of lesson plans and transitions and working with much younger students! I always thought I wanted to work with younger students, but I have really loved being in a fourth grade science and writing classroom. I know days in younger classrooms can be exhausting, and I'm excited to see all the differences. It's definitely going to be weird  to go back to observing and being so foreign to the classroom procedures and school formats. I don't know much about the school that I am moving into, and I have been fortunate at Lockeland to not have to deal with many serious behavioral issues or truly unexpected classroom events. While I hope my new placement is different and I can get a variety of experiences, I know I will have to adjust to a new school and classroom culture. I'm excited to get started at our second schools! It's been a strange week this week and I'm looking forward to getting back into our routine.

"The Clipboard Mafia"

A few weeks ago, teachers at Tusculum were observed for instructional rounds. The teachers and faculty refer to the observers as "The Clipboard Mafia," which I think is pretty funny :)

Before the rounds happened, the principal emailed the teachers telling them the "problem of practice" (short version: students are not working on grade level and they have not developed higher-order thinking skills) and "focus questions" that the observers would be looking for. Their focus questions were:

1. What evidence do you see or hear in the areas of questioning/academic feedback that indicates the in-depth level of student work is at the appropriate grade level according to the standard(s) and learning targets?
2. What evidence do you see or hear that indicates the standards and learning targets are scaffolded for diverse learners?
3. What evidence do you see or hear that indicates the academic language of the standard is differentiated for various English language proficiencies?

The rounds ended up being at the same time that our students were taking the MIST test, so they did not come observe any lessons in our classroom. However, my mentor teacher and I still talked about these focus questions and how I could adjust my lessons to show evidence of the things they were looking for.

At the faculty meeting after the instructional rounds, the principal talked about what the Clipboard Mafia had told her. It turned out that they really didn't see a lot of the things they were looking for in most of the classrooms they observed. Many of the teachers who had been observed were frustrated, because they said that the observers came during morning meeting, when students were eating breakfast, and they didn't feel like they really had the opportunity to demonstrate the things the observers were looking for. Others felt like the suggestions for improvement were vague (my FM asked for specific examples on how to show evidence of differentiating academic language, and there weren't really any concrete examples of what they were looking for).

Have any of you been observed, or have you talked to your mentor teachers about instructional rounds? These seem really intimidating, and I am honestly so glad they didn't come at a time when I was teaching. I do think it's helpful that the teachers got the focus questions and problem of practice ahead of time, but do you think that these short observations are really enough for the observers to get a good idea of what's happening in a classroom, no matter what time of day they come?

Peabody IT Rentals... A Rant.

I don't know about all of you, but I found it pretty hard to get a camera last week for filming. I know this is being posted after I had luckily gotten my filming and editing done, but is anybody else as angry as I am? First, we were told that reserving a camera was not a thing. This meant that we had to show up a day or two in advance (oh, don't even think about trying to rent on the weekends), and hope that there was camera available. Then, I know some of us did find out that reserving a camera was a possibility. Peabody IT needs to figure out whether or not they are allowing us to reserve these cameras or not. Would have made life a little bit easier... am I right? However, I then hear that some of the people who reserved cameras had their cameras given out. I think that they should probably make up their minds and either stick to reserving cameras or not. 
I was one of the unfortunate ones who was unable to get a camera from IT. No camera, no tripod, no nothing. So, I asked them where else I might be able to get one from and they did not know. They had no idea. I don't blame the student worker for not knowing, but the head of IT didn't even know. They said I should try Peabody Library. So, I packed up all my stuff and headed to the library. When I got there, they said that they had a FlipCamera that I could use. Never have I ever heard of a FlipCamera in my life, but I figured it was my only option at that point. I laughed, literally laughed, when the Library Desk Worker handed me what looked like a handheld audio recorder. I couldn't believe that this little, dinky camera is what I would have been filming the edTPA video clips on. I asked the man how long it would film and he told me an hour, as long as it was charged. 
I got home, got it charged, and turned it on. It was only going to be able to film for 17 minutes and 53 seconds... not even a full 18 minutes... shocker. Furious, I called A&S IT and asked if I could rent a camera from there and they told me yes. However, since I wasn't and A&S student I would have to pay $50 and wait for them to email my professor to "make sure I actually needed it for class." Oh. my. goodness. Anyway, long story short, one of the teachers on the 4th grade team at Lockeland ended up having a FlipCamera that actually did record an hour and I was able to successfully film, save, and clip the video as needed. 
To bring this rant to an end, I think we need to tell somebody about this. I know I wasn't the only person who had difficulties with getting a camera. I also know that I was not the only one who was told that reserving a camera was not allowed. What can we do about this? Should we sit down and talk to IT? Should there be a week when cameras are reserved for edTPA filming for all Student Teachers? Should A&S be able to charge Peabody Students? Maybe Student Teaching seminar classes can be allotted a certain number of cameras and then we can alternate filming over the course of a month? I don't know! This needs to be brought to somebody's attention, because nobody should have to go through the amount of added stress some of us had to. ESPECIALLY during the stressful and crazy edTPA filming days! Again, sorry for the rant... I'm obviously still a little peeved. 

Snow Days

Because what could be more timely...

Obviously as student teachers about to write our TPAs, these snow days couldn't have come at a more perfect time.  I have been so happy to get a few more hours of sleep, do some extra research for my TPA, and write my context for learning while watching Singin' in the Rain instead of in Peabody Library with a grande latte from Starbucks at 1AM.  But as convenient as the snow days are for us, I can't help but think about the loss of learning our students and how frustrating this would be for our teachers.  Can you imagine being one of the teachers Cassie talked about in her last post whose job relies on student scores and then have your students be gone for a whole week? I don't know about y'all, but I sometimes feel like my kiddos forget what I teach after two days, more or less after a whole week off.

Additionally, less so at Hickman, but at the school I was at last semester, I know there were kids who only ate when they came to school.  They got food sent home with them on the weekends, but it makes me so sad to think about their cold and hungry selves at home on these snow days.  What do we do with that as teachers, knowing that we can't do anything?  I know we can only work our hardest and best to make the time our kids spend in our classroom the best it can be, but sometimes it just doesn't feel like enough.

What's your strategy for staying positive on these snowy days when you're worrying about your kids?  What would your plan be for refocusing your kids when you get back?  What are you doing with your time off to make sure you spend it wisely?