Year Two, Update Two.

If you don't have something nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all - especially if it is being posted on the internet.

That's my excuse for not writing this year. My students are fine - they're not causing me any big problems. It's the other parts (administration, coworkers, and policy-rules) that are driving me insane this year.

If I had felt this frustrated last year, I may not have made it to being a second year teacher.

I'm basically frustrated/upset much of the time, have gotten "in trouble" for doing things like going to conferences and assessing my students, (both things that were encouraged last year...) and will probably be layed off again at the end of the school year due to further budget cuts (without hope for being rehired).


But, the kids are great. When I'm not getting in trouble or having my schedule screwed with, I am feeling surprisingly competent in teaching. Many of my students have made awesome jumps in reading since the beginning of the school year, and even though I am not using the new district-mandated math program (because I was never taught how, and it is very traditional/worksheet based, instead of being constructivist which I how I like to teach math) my students are doing pretty well in math, too.

I was so lucky last year to have such a supportive administration and such great coworkers. Maybe someday I'll have the opportunity to experience that again.

Year Two!

Well, I've been gone for a long time.

The start of the school year has been crazy and busy. But, overall, things have been going surprisingly well.

I have six more students than I did most of last year, eight more than I did by the end of last year. But, we're figuring out how to all coexist in one room together.

I have some students who I have yet to figure out and some students who have been wonderful from the first day of school.

I really like some of the people at my new school, and am having adjustment problems with others, but am hoping to work out some of those issues soon.

One new thing I'm trying is giving the students more "freedom". Last week (the...5th-ish week of school) I decided that we would no longer have assigned desks. Students can sit wherever they want on the rare occasion that we are actually sitting at desks, and can have more than 4 people at a group of 4 desks, if they want. When we are sitting on the rug, they can sit with me on the rug, or they can pull chairs up to the rug and sit on the chairs, or they can sit at desks. During centers and math time, they can sit at desks, on the floor, or on top of the desks. When I'm reading a story, they can lie down, if they want. We've been working with this for a week now, and so far I like it.

I need to record more of my second year (because I'm no longer a first year teacher!!) so that I can view my own progression from year one to year two.

Hopefully I will force myself to write down more. Because with the extra students comes extra humor/excitement/tears/excreted bodily fluids/office referrals/guided reading groups/piles of paper...

Pre School Jitters.

I'm having way more anxiety for school starting this year than I did before the start of last school year.

Last year, I had no expectations. I knew nothing. So everything was good.

This year I have expectations and I know nothing will look like I am expecting it to.

I'm at a new school with a new principal and new teachers.

I didn't get to choose this school, I was just placed there.

I was going to have one class, and it changed last minute, and it was partially my decision and now I'm regretting it. The option was given to me way out of the blue and I didn't know anything and I should have asked for a night to think about it, but I didn't, and I know it will be fine, but I'm still mad at myself for saying I would change my class.

Everything will be different and I want it all to be the same. Aside from the whole getting layed off thing last year, it was a fabulous year. I loved everything about last year.

A new year will never be able to live up to last year.

I'm trying not to have expectations. I'm trying to go into it with an open mind, an "everything will be fine" mind. But for some reason, I can't.

I am terrified and I don't know why.

Lisa

(This is my fifth post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Lisa was a very quiet student in my class. Unlike the other girls, she never wears skirts or skorts or jumpers. She only ever wears pants. She doesn't wear braids or barrettes or multiple ponytail holders in her hair. She has either one ponytail or her hair is down. She doesn't usually hang out with the rest of the girls (who greatly outnumber the boys) in my class. Really, she doesn't hang out with much of anyone. Not in an outcast way - the others don't avoid her, they actually all seem to quite like her. Not in a shy way - Lisa doesn't cower on the fringe of groups. She just doesn't participate in the girly giggly, hair playing, actively sucking-up-to-the-teacher activities that most of the other girls do.

Lisa is perfectly behaved, perfectly. She is the best behaved student in the class. I at times called her my "Sticker Queen" because there were days when I would get frustrated and give those who quickly behaved a sticker. Lisa ended up covered in stickers because she was always the first one to clean up, the first one to sit down, the first one to start her work. Like all my students, Lisa is Latina, but was one of the 3 students in my class who was not considered to be an English language learner. She doesn't speak Spanish. In fact, at one point on a school feedback form (that was supposed to be anonymous), her mother complained that all the ELL students were given too much attention and stole the teacher's attention from the English-only students. (Which I know is not true in my class since, of those three monolingual English speakers in my class, one is a significant behavior challenge, one is a always-in-the-middle-of-everything busybody, and one is Lisa, the sticker queen who is praised and used as a model constantly.)

Academically, Lisa was generally just slightly below where I would have liked her to have been. But, she always did her work, always tried hard, and always worked well with others, despite the fact that she wasn't drawn to hanging out in large groups.

One day Lisa whispered to me, "Ms. Grownup, I'm wearing boys shoes." I responded, "Okay. Hey, as long as they're comfy, that's great!" And that was that. They were gym shoes, white/blue/black instead of the girlie white/pink/purple color combination that is sold in the girl's shoe sections.

Lisa was always awesome. I very strategically sat her between two girls. One girl was academically much lower than Lisa and quite hyperactive. This girl, Juliette, sometimes struggled with partners. Lisa was always a fabulous partner to Juliette. Even when they weren't doing specific partner work, Lisa helped her read or sound out the spelling (she didn't tell Juliette how to spell, Lisa simply helped sound out the words). When Juliette got off task, Lisa tried to draw her back. On the other side of Lisa sat Clara, a girl with fairly low self-esteem (both academic and social). Lisa "helped" her academically, even though in reality Clara had advanced quite a bit and was about equal to Lisa in reading ability. Lisa was always there to pay attention to Clara though, which was important. When the two of the worked together, they worked quietly and slowly, but generally got the job done.

During a kind of raucous science activity one day, a student shouted across the room to me, "Ms. Grownup! Lisa says she's a boy, but she isn't." I shouted back, "Lisa can say she is whoever she want to be." And again, that was that. I was going in a thousand directions at the time, and didn't get a chance to think about it until later.

Do these conversations mean anything? I don't know.
Am I reading more into it than is actually there? Perhaps.
Does Lisa feel more like a boy, than like the girl who society wants her to be? Or was the other student misinterpreting something she had said? I'm not sure.

In class, I didn't talk about gender much except to point out that there is no such thing as a "girl color" or a "boy color." To talk about the fact that girls and boys can wear whatever colored clothes or styled clothes they want. To show examples of and talk about how there is no such thing as a "girl job" or a "boy job." I tried to make sure I called on each gender equally for each type of lesson/style of question (though I never charted it or had anyone chart it for me, so I don't know if I was entirely successful in doing so.)

Maybe next year I should talk more explicitly about gender, discussing what students' perceptions are, and why they have stereotypes about gender. In college, the first unit plan I created had a really neat lesson on gender stereotypes. Maybe I'll try to modify it to first grade and use it next year.

Jason

(This is my fourth post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Jason was only in my class for a few weeks. Four weeks, five, maybe. He came in unexpectedly one day (just showing up at my classroom door with the secretary, as new students tended to do). His cousin began the same day in the class next door.

Jason was a fabulous reader, placed in my super-high group (and in fact, I never got around to testing him all the way, to see how "high" he really was.) His math skills, however, were very low. Basic concepts confused him. Maybe he had been at a school before that focused even more on reading than we did. Maybe they didn't do enough math in his old first grade. Or, maybe he was just not a mathematician. I don't know. I worked individually with him, but he wasn't there long enough for me to really get to know him.

Anyway, one day, after having been in the room for weeks, Jason looked over at the wall and saw our Weekly Reader issue with Obama on the cover.

"Hey!" he shouted with a grin. "I know that guy!"
"Yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah! We talked about him at my old school!"
"Tell me about him," I suggested.
"That's 'Bama! I voted for him! I want him to be president!"
"Well, he is," I reassured Jason.
"Yeah..." Jason responded, still looking adoringly at the picture.

Jason got very excited about things in a very adorable way.

During science one day we were doing observations. He came up to me with the science material and started talking and exclaiming about the object he was observing.

"It's so happy!" he shouted, I think talking about the whole situation, not the specific object he was observing. "It's so cool!" he continued.
"Yeah?" I prompted him.
"Yeah...I think I'm going to explode of happiness..." he sighed with satisfaction under his breath, as he walked back to his desk.

Unfortunately, Jason left as suddenly as he arrived. One day he was absent, and his cousin told me he had moved. "Moved, like, to a new house?" I asked, "Or moved to a new school."
"He moved far away," she answered, shrugging her shoulders. And, I never saw Jason again. His cousin ended up moving a few weeks later as well.

Wherever they went, I hope they're living together still. Jason was a little spacey, a little scatterbrained. His cousin took good care of him. They had lived together when they both went to Awesome School, and I think helped each other in different ways. (Jason helped with the reading, his cousin helped with developing social skills.)

Luis

(This is my third post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

At the beginning of the school year, about the third week of school, one of my students informed me that she wanted to be called by a different name. I had been calling her by her first name, and she preferred her second name. I was glad she felt comfortable enough to let me know, so I immediately made her a new desk tag and announced to the class that she wanted to go by her second name.

As could be expected, the other students started shouting out random other names that they wanted to be called. Luis wanted to be called "The Hulk." That one, I didn't allow.

Luis was fairly average in most respects. There were times that he drove me crazy. There were times that he worked hard and tried his best.

He liked to write. Luis once wrote a story about La Llorona and The Hulk. This story ended up being about 3 pages long. It was epic and hilarious. (La Llorona and The Hulk were fighting to see who would win. Since La Llorona is a sort of boogywoman, and The Hulk is a fictional charactor, I allowed the fighting.)

Luis was one of the few students I had who generally stayed on task during literacy centers. At each center the students had an activity to do (a computer game to play, a word sort to sort, partner reading to share, a literacy game to play) and they always had something they had write to prove to me that they had done what they were supposed to do. Luis was good at getting those accountability pieces done.

At the first conference in the fall, I was telling Luis's mom how wondeful he was, and she asked about his behavior. I told her that his behavior was fine - not perfect, but on par with everyone else's. She was surprised. She said he was always getting in trouble at home, constantly moving and bothering his sister. I'm glad that I was able to put in a good word for him at that time.

Manuel

(This is my second post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Manuel began the school year as a very enthusiastic and hard working student. He would sit down and try his best to do what he was supposed to do. Shortly after school began, Manuel started to stand out as being academically quite low. Despite attending Awesome School all of the previous year for kindergarten, his reading level was still at the beginning kindergarten level. He didn’t consistently know all of his letter sounds or his numbers to 10.

But, despite this, Manuel continued to fully throw himself into whatever we were doing. I quickly implemented many interventions with him, trying to bring him up academically, while maintaining his wonderful work ethic.

Manuel always liked to write. And, compared to his reading level, his writing level was fairly high (though still falling far lower than the majority of the class). I hoped to draw upon his enjoyment of writing to help develop his reading skills. I worked with him a lot on his writing, encouraging him to sound out words to the best of his ability, to go back and reread what he had written, to get ideas down on paper in whatever way he could. His writing progressed a bit, and he always enjoyed writing and sharing his writing with others.

A few months after the start of school, Manuel began going to a different teacher for guided reading – one who had more experience working with struggling students, and one who also had a reading interventionist working together with her during guided reading time. For much of the school year, Manuel got two guided reading groups each day. His reading moved a little bit, very slowly. I stopped doing weekly assessments on his knowledge of letter sounds and moved onto assessing his ability to read nonsense words (a popular “testing” skill in first grade, which I should write a whole post about at some point) and his ability to read simple kindergarten passages. His progress from week to week was very, very slow.

Sadly, as the year progressed, Manuel began to realize how very low he was in reading compared to the rest of the class. His behavior worsened a bit, and his focus decreased. His guided reading teacher said that she was having problems getting him to do his centers work when he was with her, and he was always out of his seat, bouncing around the room, when he was with me. He started to make comments about how he couldn’t read. He saw that other kids were reading much more complicated texts, while he was struggling with most anything given to him. I always did my best to reassure him that he was learning to read. I explained to Manuel that it was taking a little longer for him to learn to read than for some of the other kids, and he, for whatever reason, was having a harder time of it, but that just meant that he had to stay focused and try extra hard. I tried to reassure him that it would come, eventually.

When I spoke with Manuel’s parents during conferences, they talked about how Manuel’s older brother had a very difficult time in school. He is a few years older than Manuel and receives special education services for reading. His father stated very matter-of-factly one time that “Manuel’s older brother has the hardest time in school. Manuel is a little bit smarter than his older brother. And Manuel’s little sister seems like she’s going to be a little smarter than Manuel.” It’s not really fair for any of the kids to put them in a hierarchy of “smartness” like that, but it is what the parents have observed and essentially been told by the teachers at the school.

So, throughout the year I worked with Manuel. He received many, many literacy interventions. He ended the year still reading far below grade level, but he did advanced about one year (from beginning kinder level to beginning first grade level) over the course of the school year, so there definitely was progress made.

The exciting thing about Manuel was that all year he seemed to understand math. Whatever his difficulty was with reading, he generally was quite average in math. Toward the end of the year though, Manuel’s mathematical understanding leaped. He wasn’t just average anymore – he was good at math. I told him this every day. I was so happy for him, so happy that we had found an area in which he performed so strong. He has a complex understanding of number sense and is able to talk about numbers, explaining where they belong in a hundreds chart, explaining what it means when you talk about something being in the “ones place” or the “tens place,” and doing a variety of other things with numbers. His one problem, even at this point, was that he still was not able to consistently identify or write the numbers 1 through 20. We had worked on it and worked on it. But, like with reading, there is some sort of disconnect going on in his brain that is making it extra hard for him to read numbers and write the numbers he is thinking of in his head.

I have thought about this and talked about it with many people. Manuel has the concept of the number six strongly in his head – he can picture six of something, he knows at the core level what six means. But, when shown the number 6, he just can’t quite seem to remember that the symbol “6” goes along with the mental representation of six objects he has in his head. Therefore, when he write out problems (and takes those painful standardized math tests the first graders were required to take this year) he doesn’t always perform as highly as he should. Manuel is good at math. He is excellent at explaining the concepts to the class, and through these explanations has proven to me and his peers that he is proficient in math.

During the final week of school, we had an awards assembly. Each teacher was supposed to hand out awards for the two academically strongest students, the two most improved students, and the two student who best exemplified the positive character traits we were supposed to have worked on during the year. (I, being the constant pseudo-rebel that I am, gave out slightly different awards. I didn’t like those categories.)

Throughout this assembly, I was sitting next to Manuel. As kids from other classes got called up to receive their awards, and Manuel received nothing, he kept whispering to me, “But Ms. Grownup, I’m good at math, right? I’m good at math?” I of course reassured him that he wasn’t just good, he was very good at math. Fortunately, both for him, for me, and for his classmates, as his math abilities really began to bloom around April, Manuel’s behavior began to improve a little bit too. He was still unfocused at times, and constantly out of his seat, but now he has something he knows he is good at. Whatever his other academic problems are, he is good at math. I am glad I was able to convince him of that, that he was able to see that and believe it. Because Manuel is good at math and deserves to be recognized for it.

Manuel will need to keep working very hard as he continues in school. I passed along to his new school all the data and information I had collected on him this year – detailing the interventions we worked on with Manuel and their outcomes. I hope that Manuel gets the services he needs to continue developing in reading, and the recognition he deserves for his hard work and excellence in math.