One Week Completed - 35 more to go!

It's a good thing I didn't try to write this post last night -- I was totally exhausted from the first week's proceedings. The transition back to the structure of the school day is really hard for all of us. By the time Friday afternoon rolls around, everyone is ready to collapse in a puddle on the floor!

Every day after lunch, we have a "Read-Aloud." On Friday afternoons after Read Aloud, we pass out the yellow "Take Home" folders and then spend a few minutes passing out letters, notices and completed work for the week. This is an activity that reminds you of the limits of first graders' spatial organizing abilities: It is very challenging for most first graders to organize papers in the confined space of a pocket folder: papers are folded, ripped, and hang out precipitously, signaling that we need to go back to square one. Yesterday we had less work to stuff, so it wasn't too difficult to get everyone's folders ship-shape. And that brings me around to today's post topic which is my discussion of why we have so little/such easy/not very much work during the first few weeks of school.

The first days of school are about establishing The Ground Rules. No matter how well organized last year was, no matter how well-behaved the child is, no matter what behaviors worked LAST year, the new school year is a totally new ballgame, a new drama with new roles and a new director. We can discuss our frustrations with the school's schedule, why a two month break is a bad idea and how we should alter the school year and our model is antiquated, yadayada yada.... but we have to work with the schedule we've got and so... all of September and a very big part of October is about setting expectations for behavior. Academics plays a role in this drama, but it is a supporting role which grows in importance after the first six weeks of school. Students and parents are sometimes impatient with this set-up.

Parents having watched their child laze about during the endless weeks summer with little or nothing to stimulate them intellectually and sometimes want to immediately rocket their six-year olds into a rich academic brew. The first parent comments often reflect a general anxiety about how "easy" the work is; parents usually underscore that they want their child "challenged" and they are looking for homework to begin right out of the gate.

Teachers are dealing with a completely different agenda in the first days of the year. When the students traipse in during early September we are faced with twenty or so small individuals who rely on us to organize and socialize them. Many students return to school anxious to find structure and friendships. The school year is analogous to the long race, not the sprint. I have no quick fixes in the first weeks of school.

My first need is to figure out what makes these individual children tick: who can sit in a circle for 15 minutes? who likes to fall over onto another child during meeting? who fidgets and constantly touches the person next to her? who calls out answers before everyone else finishes processing the question? who is quiet and good-natured? who is curious? who likes to read and can't put the book down? or does he just look at the words without having an impact? who reads, at what level? what kinds of books will she read? does she like science? reading about people from long ago? reading about children her age?

What's wonderful about September teaching is being confronted with a new class of these small people, each so different and alluring, a puzzle with endless configurations and solutions. Every September challenges me to dig into these small packages, requiring me to think about how to group them, seat them, organize them, motivate them, correct them, partner them, encourage them, you name it -- the list seems endless.

I can find superficial solutions to "challenging" an entering six-year old: I can go to the bookshelf and dig up a book of 2nd and 3rd grade multiplication and division math problems and that would probably satisfy the complaints. I could give my 1st graders whose parents claim their child read Harry Potter over the summer a 4th or 5th grade book. It would be like putting a child who hasn't learned to ride a two-wheeler on a motorcycle. It's possible to learn the mechanics , but he'd miss the exhilaration of learning how to keep his balance, to steady the handlebars, and to feel the excitement of pumping the pedals and taking off feeling the wind in his face...

So that's what I'm thinking when parents first words are about wanting me to challenge their child. If I do my job the way I should, as the weeks progress I'll know what the child's strengths are, what they like to do, and what they don't like to do. Sometimes a challenge is doing what you don't want to do because it makes you feel ...nervous, worried, not sure you'll excel at it. I'll be working on getting the child to think about what he does well and what he needs to work on. We'll reflect on what we need to do to make his work better. It's not just that the work needs to be harder, it may to be redone more neatly and more carefully. A challenge could mean we do less of what the child does easily and more of what he or she doesn't like to do. At the same time, sometimes parents aren't always happy that their child is still is learning to enjoy riding the bike, because they have visions of their 1st grader mountain biking, flying a plane, hangliding or parasailing.

Making Mistakes

Today I'm going to write about Making Mistakes. It might not seem to be the first topic that pops to mind -- except it does (pop to my mind, that is).

The first day opened smoothly; the children arrived with big smiles and great excitement to begin the new year. We always begin our days with a Morning Meeting -- an opportunity to gather in a circle (on our new placemats!) and greet each other with a smile and a handshake. I always model how NOT to greet someone -- I walk up to my student teacher, look disinterested and bored, stare at the floor and say in a very unpleasant tone, "Good Morning, Ms. G." The students all shake their heads and say, "She'll feel BAD!" I ask what I did that would make Ms. G. feel bad, and hands pop up. "You didn't look at her!" "You shook her hand like you were sick !" "You sounded mean and you didn't smile at her!" The children easily pick up on my negative body language. I ask them, "Well, what do I need to do to make her understand that I'm happy to see her?" They raise their hands (I don't call on them unless they do) and as they list the three basics of Greeting (eye contact, a firm but not hurtful shake with the right hand, using a clear voice to say their partner's name as they say or respond, "Good Morning, Juanita!") I am very impressed by how quickly they pick up on the right thing to do -- and understand the reasoning behind the actions.

As part of our Morning Meeting, we read a message that I write and post on the easel. One of the children noticed that I had written the wrong date on the message -- Thursday, September 5th, not the 4th as it should have been. I was quickly reminded that everyday I feel I could really use an editor and a valet to make it through the school day. It's easy to get flustered (which I was) and you need to take a moment to get your bearings. "Hmmmmm," I said as I looked at the message and the day's schedule, which was also wrong. "I made a mistake. Sometimes when people do things quickly, they make mistakes and that's what happened here. I wrote the dates without checking first. When I make a mistake, please help me to see it and I'll fix it. It's important to check your work, but sometimes, you may miss your mistakes. But it's very important that you not be afraid to make mistakes because you can fix them."

So that's the gist of today's post. We're working on creating a learning environment where students feel safe and cared for. We're creating a place where students can try to do things they didn't like to do before because... well maybe they weren't sure they could. We practice doing things over because.... sometimes it takes practice, lots of it, to get better at things. We're making a place where it's safe to try ...maybe even fail (yes, sometimes each one of us fails), but.... we can work at it, work really hard at it, and get better at it, whatever it is.

So the students got a big charge out of my message and calendar mistakes. I told them I make a LOT of mistakes everyday and they should try and help me find them and fix them. A few of the students looked at me like they really didn't believe me, but they will as the months roll on. The same is true for this blog. I re-read my first post and was reminded you shouldn't do things quickly, or in this case, after being up 15 hours on the night before school starts. That editor wasn't here to find all my typos. I haven't found out yet how to edit my text after I publish it (sigh). I'm reminded, however, that if I want to get good at this I just have to take the leap, learn from my mistakes and, hopefully, get better at it.

The Day Before School Starts

While I have some very limited experience blogging with my daughters (yes, I have five children, four daughters - two married, one with two children 4 and 7 months, a second with a 3 year old) about our gardens, our attempts to manage food consumption, grandchildren news and family events, I have not yet ventured into the arena of blogging about the school day(s). This year I made a promise to test the waters to see if it is realistic for me to try and keep parents updated and informed via a blog. The first caveat seems to me is to set parent expectations very low, so that if it becomes unwieldy to sit down and write, the 1D parent community won't be too disappointed.

The second caveat seems to me to take care to make certain that parents understand that as jumping into the blogging arena is a bit of a risky venture for a teacher -- I want to bring parents along on the journey through the schoolday and give them a peak into what I see and hear in my teaching. At the same time I need to caution the community to be aware that sometimes they'll also be privy to self-reflection and ruminations on how I handled certain moments, sometimes presenting myself in a less than perfect light. Certainly no teacher wants to paint him or herself as weak, vacillating or indecisive. I 'm aware of the need create a persona that's humble (I'm still learning!), respectable, reasonable, but not omniscient.

So the desks are cleaned and labeled; the Morning Message is written, the scheduled is on the board, the parent information packets are stacked neatly, ready for distribution tomorrow. Most of the students arrived today to "get the lay of the land," some were quiet and shy, some wouldn't talk to me, some were so excited to see the room and their friends they didn't really want to talk to me -- that's all fine. The point was to make tomorrow morning's arrival a little more comfortable, a little less intimidating. The students (and their parents) got to look me in the eye and test whether I was scary (or nice) or funny or just okay. Everyone got to shake my hand or give me a "pinky shake," which is an acceptable compromise. I like to end each day with a handshake or a hug or a high-five, just so that we have some symbolic ritual of closure for the day. I'm a big believer in rituals and routines. More on those later.

I hope to post at least once a week. If I can find the time to do more, so be it! Let me know via e-mail if you have insights or thoughts, and we'll see how things progress.