Week 5: Building a Community

Here are some things I would have said in class last Tuesday. I decided to write them all down and include them in my blog, which is a little more comfortable for me at this point in time:

General Discussion
~Maybe we shouldn’t have to defend our professions so vehemently… We should be proud of what we do!

~”Teachable moments” – Use them!
*Students afraid to cross the street so teacher turned it into a unit to get a street light.

~Mandated curriculum can be good because if not, each 2nd grade can be learning COMPLETELY different things and go to the same 3rd grade not be on the same page; they will have different background knowledge.

~It’s not a sacrifice if you want to be a teacher. If you feel like it’s a sacrifice, maybe you shouldn’t be a teacher.
*If you stay for 10 years, maybe things change and your reason for leaving will be
different.

~”Don’t work harder than your students”

~Beginning teachers are idealists. I may be one too, but it’s a fact. You learn to “do what you’re told”. It may not be a good thing to challenge the way things work depending on the situation. “Doing what you’re told” doesn’t mean you are not a good teacher!!!!!! So far I feel like I am hearing you MUST push the envelope to be a good teacher.

Buchmann – Professional Community
~What if you need to deviate from the written curriculum in order to help your students understand the topic better?
*Use a different method than what’s in the curriculum to help them better understand
if the curriculum isn’t working. We shouldn’t be bound to it if it doesn’t work…
*Doing a different and/or extra lesson with my math group because they didn’t
understand when to regroup and borrow in subtraction. They are still learning and just
needed more practice than was given in the curriculum.
*Should I stay on the projected path (like the curriculum says) even if they don’t get it?

~Teacher is a role you play, not who you are.
*Think about what’s best for the students, not for you.
*Even though teacher is a role, it takes a certain type of person to fulfill that role.

~It’s great to use your strengths in conjunction with other teachers’ strengths, but this is more like middle and high school.
*Elementary school teachers need to be strong in all subjects. Sure, they may still have
a strength in one area, but it is their job to teach all subjects.

~Don’t loose your own identity and your strengths! Simply work with other teachers to share each teacher’s strength and give each student the best education you can.

~Holding your teaching up to public scrutiny show your work isn’t private and you’re open to suggestions.

~I feel we are leaning towards the view that curriculum is bad…
*Curriculum helps ensure that all students in each grade are learning the same things
and are all prepared with the same background knowledge to enter the next grade.

~If you run out of time during a lesson, come to a stopping point and pick it up next class!
*Ask questions about what happened last time to bring everyone up to speed and
reconstruct what was discovered in the first lesson. It may “ruin” the curriculum
because you are not carrying it out EXACTLY as written, but the students are still
learning what they need to learn and in a way that is good for them.


On top of all this, I wanted to write a little about creating a community in the classroom (our readings for this week.) I think it is very beneficial to spend some time at the beginning of the school year just learning about each other. Math, reading, science, and social studies can wait a little bit. Or, they can just as easily be incorporated into activities to learn more about each other. In my 1st grade class we followed the Responsive Classroom curriculum to get the year going. We have a morning message with a question to answer everyday – the question usually asks students to voice their opinion about something. We have a morning meeting where we greet each other and share something – a fun activity done over the weekend, what we want to be when we grow up, the opinions expressed in the morning message question. We really focused on this for only about 2 weeks (Responsive Classroom curriculum says you should spend 6 weeks) and I still learned so much about each student! For this to be most effective, it’s something that must be continued throughout the entire year. It has really helped us get to know our students and to check-in with how everyone is feeling every morning. You can usually tell from the way they greet each other whose morning didn’t get off to a good start. Continuing to build this strong community all year will help students to always feel comfortable learning and taking risks in the classroom.