Who are you?

Who are you? I feel like this is a question that we may ask ourselves as teachers a lot. Who are we? What are we doing? I know personally I do a lot of thinking about who I want to be and what type of teacher or daughter or fiance I want to be, but it is easy to focus on who you want to be and forget who your students want to be, better yet, who they are. I realize that over the past month I have really been doing a lot of work on trying to really dig deeper into who my students are and who their parents are. Relationships have been a topic of conversation to say the least in my classroom this year, relationships between me and my students, relationships between my students and each other, and relationships between me and my student's parents. it is amazing what a difference a meaningful, knowledgeable relationship can have.  I have really noticed a difference with my students this past month - those who I have really taken the time to know have come a long way, those who I am still struggling with I realize that there is still something major I am missing and it all comes back to - who are you? 

I realize as I look back over this past month that I focused a lot on relationships both with my students and with their parents. I was able to really build stronger relationships with both parents and students of my class. I feel as though I was really able to make some strong headway with certain parents that things were previously not going well with and I was able to celebrate making major breakthroughs with certain students that have been really struggling with throughout the year.  Being able to break though and have multiple successful days with Jamari is a huge success for me, as well as really feeling as though parent relationships and involvement is taking a positive turn rather than a negative, accusatory turn.  I also really focused on working with my students and meeting them where they needed to be met rather than trying to force something on them that I knew in the end wouldn’t work anyway.  I feel as though I was really able to see what was working and what was not working and create a plan that worked for my students.

I feel as though I have gotten much better at becoming a responsive teacher and really trying to stick with trying new things and working on things until a solution is found rather than just simply giving up. Again this comes back to me seriously asking the question - who are you? I am also really happy that these parent relationships that I have been trying to foster and grow are finally coming around. I realize that things do not happen overnight and that it takes time for things to change.

Our action research class has really allowed me to focus in on what my students needs are and think about different ways to go about bringing my students and my student’s parents to a more positive place. Our class with Dr. K last spring has also helped me because it has given me the opportunity to really see behind the scenes with my student’s parents and realize that culture plays a big part in the classroom and what my students experience outside the four walls of my classroom greatly impacts how they are within the four wall of my classroom.

I realize that things take time and you don’t really get to know someone overnight. I also have to remind myself that people see things from different perspectives and how I am interpreting something may be very different from how someone else is interpreting something. It is these differences that help make us who we are and allow us to be passionate about things in different ways.

I want to really allow freedom with my students – freedom for them to do things that matter to them, freedom to be themselves and the freedom for them to determine what kind of impression they want to leave behind when they move on next year. I want to apply that to working with my student’s parents too to some extent. I want them to be advocates for their child in what their child wants rather than advocates for themselves as parents trying to make a point about something. 

So I ask the question - who are you?

The empowered student

As the year continues to fly by I find myself trying to keep up with what is happening and what areas need to have more focus. Throughout the past month my students have continued to have the opportunity to engaged in activities that they have found meaningful and relevant to their lives and their interests. They have also continued to make connections through math and science to the world that they live in. I have also been able to improve my parent involvement. I have one parent who comes and volunteers in the classroom at least once a week to help me and the students. I have also been working with other parents to finalize their volunteer information with the hopes that we will be able to do a parent involvement day once a month where parents can come in and run small groups with me - this would give them an opportunity to not only see their child in action but also feel like they are playing an integral part in their student's education. I also think it is a great way to help me build relationships with my parents and truly get an understanding of where my students come from and what is important to them. 

Our math classes have really helped me when it comes to the way I teach math and the way I provide learning opportunities for my students in math. I have learned so much from both Ms. Bloxson and Dr. Smith in regards to what activities are actually meaningful, worthwhile tasks rather than repetitive, memorization tasks. I have also used a lot of ideas from our science class this summer with Dr. Jarrett and what it means to make meaningful science tasks and how to help our students understand that they are scientists themselves.

I continue to work on classroom culture. I can honestly say that yes I do think the culture of the classroom has improved since the first 8 weeks but I can also say that I know it is still not where it needs to be. As I reflect back on what might be causing this development to slowly develop I realize that I think a lot of it has to do with my personal relationships with the students as well as our special education teacher. I realize that the culture of my classroom is not going to build itself up over night and that it takes me setting an example in all aspects, not just the convenient ones. I am excited to say that I feel as though that I have started putting new things in place to help with this process. Our new ladies lunch and boys lunch is a time for the guys of the classroom and the ladies of the classroom to come together and interact with one another. It is also based around the idea that you get a special invite to this lunch if you were caught doing the theme of the week. For example, if the theme is helping someone when they are struggling and a teacher catches you doing this deed then you get a special invite. The idea is to help our students foster these ideas and traits with one another. I am hopeful that this will be a good experience and I know from speaking with my students that eating lunch with the teachers is definitely something they want to do!

I have also thought a lot about empowering my students. I want them to feel as though they have a voice and they are an important part of our classroom - this again ties into our classroom culture. I have worked hard to provide my students team building opportunities which I think has really helped my students in their working together skills. We have also started using our recess time as a team building time by playing team sports which is a way for them to really use their team building skills in a positive, non-academic way. From what I have seen so far I think this may have been the secret to success! However the thing I am most excited about is our revamp on classroom jobs. Classroom jobs are always something that I begin at the beginning of the year but do a poor job of keeping up with or really making them meaningful for myself or for the students (yes again consistency is not my strong point). I realized that I was doing a lot of things that I didn't necessarily need to be doing and that if a student was given the opportunity to do them they would really feel empowered and as though they were an integral part of the classroom. There is a big difference between having a job that you feel like doesn't require anything and having a job that you know the class is counting on you for. I am eager to again see how this plays a role in our classroom culture and togetherness. 

I think I have realized that there are some things I can control and there are other things that I cannot control. Realizing what I can and cannot control and then moving forward with those things that I can control has been really helpful in making my highs higher. It has given me the opportunity to really reflect on my lows and be responsive to them in a way that I can control rather than waiting or assuming that things will just change. I am determined to make this year a meaningful and wonderful one!

8 weeks down... where does the time go?

8 weeks down... 28 to go... it amazes me how quickly the school year flies by. It seems like just yesterday I was opening the door to room 366 for the first time getting ready to embark and an adventure I had been tirelessly preparing for all summer. As I reflect back and consider how things went my first year, I realize that I wouldn't be there I am today without the mistakes I made before. That being said, I assumed my second year would be drastically easier, and in some aspects I was correct, in others, not so much. 

Dr. K has talked to us about the importance of culture and connecting with our communities and really involving parents to be a part of that. These are things that although I thought I was doing as I reflect on my fist 8 weeks I realize I could be doing a much better job. Connecting with parents is more than just sending home a nightly email with the homework update, or calling to discuss either positive or negative behavior, it is truly getting to know the child, who they are, where they come from, what is important to them and why is it important to them. Without building a strong classroom culture, you aren't setting anyone up for ultimate success. Culture is everything. If I am able to relate to my students and bring their culture and things that are meaningful to them into the classroom then everything else will fall into place. A strong classroom culture allows us to relate and understand one another as well as see things from different perspectives that may help explain why something is the way it is. Having a strong culture leads to understanding the students and what really engages them or means something to them. There is nothing better than an engaged student during a lesson. Engagement helps with behavior problems, critical thinking, inquiry, involvement, connections, everything that I as a teacher wan for my students. And all that needs to happen to get us there is a strong classroom culture.

I realize that our good times are ones where students are engaged and feel valued as a student in the classroom. They are days that students are able to see themselves as a part of the group and not just another name on the roster. They are able to make sense of what is going on in the room around them because they have an understanding of what the students in the room around them are like. They are making connections with science experiments that go way further than filling in vocabulary words on a worksheet.

I knew that the first year would be one of the hardest things I have ever done. And I was right. I also had high hopes that the second year would be much easier in the sense of I to some extent knew what to expect. I am lucky enough to be teaching the same grade and same subjects with the same co-teacher so all of the hard work and keeping track last year has paid off to some extent. I think what I realize more than anything is that I am able to take what I learned from last year, both in regards to academics and behavior, and apply it this year in an even more strategic way. Last year was all about trying to stay afloat, and not that this year isn’t either, but at least this year I am able to start with what I learned from last year and work from there, I do not have to start from scratch. I am also able to take the wonderful techniques I learned during Dr. Jarrett’s class in regards to inquiry and really apply them in science. My students didn’t learn science last year, they learned key vocabulary words and hypothetical situations. This year my students have already had the opportunity to decompose bananas in the classroom, create ecosystems for animals they discover on the playground while exploring THEIR world, create and link the conceptual ideas around food chains and food webs to their diet and create new humans with animal like adaptations and discuss how their lives would change. They have been able to think critically, use their world around them to make meaningful connections and continue to inquire new ideas that arise as they think through what is currently happening around them. They are being scientists!

 I have learned a lot from all of my classes throughout grad school but our numbers and operations class with Dr. Smith has brought so many things to the forefront for me in regards to mathematics. One of my goals for this year for my students was to make sure they were able to see the connections between the real world and what we do inside our classroom every day. The way  she has helped me look at mathematics and realize that every math problem is simply a story for a student to discover has been amazing. Through the use of real world examples, story problems and a classroom culture built around their interests I have been able to celebrate in the success of strong math lessons this year. Ones that are not students repeating the same type of standard algorithm over and over again but instead ones that they can take outside the classroom and directly apply to their knowledge of the real world. This has been a huge success and celebration throughout the past 8 weeks. 

Throughout the next 28 weeks I am going to continue to work on culture in the classroom. A strong classroom culture does not appear overnight, and it takes consistency from the teacher to help nurture a strong classroom culture. I can be honest in saying that consistency is not always my strong point when it comes to starting or trying new things. I realize though as I look back over my highs and lows that my highs are because culture was evident and my students knew it. On the other hand, my lows were because our classroom culture was weak and I was being inconsistent with my nurturing of things. By keeping on top of our classroom culture and by continuing to nurture it through the next 28 weeks I am confident that everything else will fall into place. I am lucky to have such wonderful, excited, amazing, intelligent students who trust me to help them achieve the goals they have set their mind to, now it is my turn to show them how it is possible.