During these first few weeks of the school year I have been balancing being a professional member of the staff, a student who is still actively learning and a teacher to my students. Professionally, I have not had any problems yet. The other teachers in my grade level are absolutely wonderful as are most of the staff. The positive environment makes me more comfortable but I still need to find my place within the staff and share my opinions in meetings more. Currently I feel a little out of place and out of my league with some of the conversations (curriculum, testing, evaluations, etc) but little by little I am finding my way. For the most part my students treat me as an equal to my mentor teacher and respect me. I am trying to do more each day to get them more comfortable with me teaching. The district I teach in (Waterford) has a strict literacy curriculum. I anticipate this to be challenging when I start my lesson plans because I won't be able to be as flexible with my lessons and unit. When planning these lessons I will try to take some of the things I learned from Finessing and Hybridizing article to add my own spin onto the curriculum mandidated by the district.
I have not been able to look at the curriculum calendar to see what I will be teaching this semester but overall I feel the most comfortable with the teaching and assessing aspects of the lesson planning. I am the most worried with planning a lesson that is inclusive to the entire class. I have a huge range of learners in my class with some at Kindergarten reading levels and some at or above 2nd grade level so I will have to use finesse to manipulate and manuever the curriculum.
Julie-I'm glad to see you feel the same way I do! Although I feel comfortable with the other teachers, I feel as though I don't have much to contribute when they talk about testing and curriculum. I am also happy to see that my students all treat me as a teacher, and treat me with respect. I have been actively participating since the first day of school, and I think that has helped the students see me as an equal with my mentor teacher. So far I have been doing the daily read aloud and discussion questions, and math calendar. By the end of the week I will be co-teaching a couple of math lessons and teaching the scholastic news on Friday. I am excited to have more opportunities, but I am nervous that they are not going to go very smoothly. The first day I did our math calendar it did not go very smoothly, but I was more comfortable with it the second time I did it, and now it goes great. Practice makes perfect! I am not worried about teaching content, but more worried that I am going to stumble over the lesson. I know that not every lesson is going to be perfectly, but I like to think that I will be able to plan them that way!
I am really happy you brought up planning a lesson that is inclusive to the entire class. I am finding a huge range of achievement areas specifically in literacy. After my MT gave DRA's this year we range from one level four to level 28's. Do you know the highest and lowest points in literacy are for your students? I attribute to the problem brought up in the Finessing Article. They talk about the inconsistencies about what the policies tell teachers to do and what actually happens due to the unrealistic expectations. During our PLC time (personal learning community) with our assigned staff group we set our goals for long and short time. Policies set up by State and District expect 100 percent of the students to level up the same in the same amount of time. They do not understand that students do not come to us with the same amount of knowledge and nor do they learn the same or grow at the same rate. We teachers instead made our goal say we expect a years growth for each individual meaning that our level four may be up to a level 14 while our level 18 may go up to a level 28 by the end of the year and both are great achievements made by each individual. I am hoping I can try to implement more of creating the hybridizing compromise between state/district policy and what is right for my individual classroom. Do you have PLC time in your school? I am in Waterford as well.
ReplyDeleteI am so happy you are having a great time fitting in as a staff member and teacher! I agree it is hard at social time when everyone is discussing curriculum and testing and am hoping this will change. Everything is going great with me too! I have a great class and great staff to work with. They have offered to help on numerous occasions and I am becoming a very active member in the school. Maybe you could help me with literacy assessments? TE 301 feels so long ago and the only thing I can honestly remember is the reading record.
There are so many things that you have both mentioned that I agree with. I too feel out of place with the staff occasionally but at other times I feel like an equal. I find it most awkward in the lunch room when the teachers discuss the students' reading levels or other types of evaluations. The staff at my school treats the interns as equals and that is something I really appreciate. I feel that as we move through the year and get to know the students and staff better that these conversations will be more comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI too have a range of reading levels in my class. Our lowest is an A (which is very low) to a 50. As you have stated, I am concerned about addressing all these levels in our lessons. I know that our class does mini-lessons with the whole class but that after the lessons the students do independent work while we pull small groups to address the variety of student needs. In addition to this strategy, I too intend to finesse to address the needs of these individuals while hybridizing across State, local, and school curriculum. I am also in a Waterford school but I have not seen a strict literacy curriculum. I know that there are certain topics that we have to discuss and work on but according to my teacher, we are allowed to add to it as we feel necessary. This will make hybridizing less complicated than it will be for other teachers. I wonder if this difference in strictness of the curriculum comes from the principals?
As far as lesson planning, I feel that the teaching is the part I feel most comfortable with and assessing feels strange. We have not done very much DRA testing yet because half of the students were in our class last year (the glory of a Multiage classroom). Because of my lack of experience with this assessment, I am nervous to do it the first time. In general, I feel I too may need some help with literacy assessments but am also willing to give any help I can provide.