Gotta Love Kindergartners

Today Mrs. Alvarado went around to make sure that each of her kindergartners had their first and last name on their paper. When she got to Peyton, she said, "Peyton, I don't see your name on your paper." He quickly replied, "It's there. It's just invisible!" Gotta LOVE kindergartners!

Performance Pay

Performance Pay is one of those ideas that I have endorsed over the years. I do believe that teachers who go above and beyond should be rewarded for their work, but in order for Performance Pay to work it has to be fair. TLN did an excellent report "Performance Pay for Teachers" that was written by 18 highly accomplished teachers suggesting ways that performance pay could be used to make that crucial difference.

Unfortunately very few of their models can be found in our county's program. Our system was a collaboration between the county and our Union and is approved by our state. Extra money, a one time $2330 minus taxes, is paid to the top 25% of teachers in our county. As I understand it, teachers are placed in different "silos" depending on what they teach and then the top 25% in each silo receive the extra compensation. While the system is designed around student achievement and teacher performance evaluation, unfortunately that means the weight is on a single day of testing. FCAT, our state test is used for teachers where it is possible. Other assessments, such as the DIBELS for K-2 teachers or county-made Music, PE, Art pre- and post-tests, are used in the elementary school and I'm sure any number of other assessments so that every teacher can put their name in the pot. That every teacher has a shot at the bonus is one of the positives.

With only 25% of teachers compensated county-wide, I'm glad to say that about 50% of the teachers at my school will receive the bonus. We are an A school and one of the few in our county that met AYP. However, these are some true, but strange circumstances.

1) We have a first grade classroom where two teachers team taught the same group of students all day. One took two months maternity leave during the year. The teacher that took maternity leave got performance pay. Her team teacher, that was with her side-by-side including teaching the class during the maternity leave, did not get the compensation.

2) We have two kindergarten teachers who team taught side-by-side the same group of students for the entire year. One got performance pay. The other did not.

3) Our second grade teachers are departmentalized. That means that one teacher teaches the Language Arts and her co-teacher teaches Math/Science/Social Studies. Each teacher has a homeroom and they switch classes mid day. Because most 2nd grades in my county are not departmentalized, there is not a silo for 2nd grade math teachers, so our 2nd grade Math teachers got their performance pay depending on how their homeroom did on the Language Arts DIBELS - no Math involved! Mind you, they never teach a single period of Language Arts but their performance pay depends on what is taught by someone else. If you are the Language Arts teacher in 2nd grade, your performance pay depends on your homeroom. In other words it only depends on what you do with half your students. I guess the other half don't count!

4) Or take this final example. Two fourth grade math teachers teach side-by-side. They have two sections of Math. One section includes a homeroom for each of them. Because of the way the class size amendment information has to be inputted into the computer, they each have a list of their own students in their homeroom, although they never have the homerooms divided for Math instruction. They always teach together. Two other homerooms (headed by two Language Arts teachers) make up their other section. So when performance pay is distributed, the Language Arts teachers and one of the math teachers gets performance pay and the other Math teacher doesn't. Understand that these two Math teachers have worked with the exact same children in a room together all year, but because the children were required to be divided in the computer, one homeroom made the mark and the other didn't! One teacher gets the money, the other doesn't!

Does this sound as ridiculous to you as it does to me? Can you see where this could be divisive? Let's face it, the economy is tough. Teachers are not exempt from the financial stresses that are seen throughout our country. We have teachers whose homes are in foreclosure, whose husbands have lost there jobs, and money, especially right now, can be a dividing issue. Of course, really nice things happen too. I overheard the teacher in the first instance say to her partner that if they couldn't figure out how to get the money then she would split hers. Such a generous gesture, but how ridiculous that they would even need to have that conversation. I am sure the first two will appeal, but if history is any indicator, it won't make any difference (if it does, I'll post a comment). They will be told there simply is no more money. It's all been given out.

One of the most disturbing trends over the years in my small sampling at my own school is fewer inclusion classes and Special Education teachers getting the bonus than the regular population teachers. That's not to say that none of the inclusion teachers ever get the extra money but it seems to be a lower percentage. I am bothered about how this will effect our inclusion teachers over time. Will they begin to feel that all the extra effort that they give in taking the most difficult children in our school is not worth it?

I decided to try to help figure out how compensation for Special Education teachers was designed so that our Special Education teachers could see why they are falling short (4 of the 7 are Nationally Board Certified). If at least 25% of Special Education teachers were getting better results than we were, I wanted to know how we could improve, but it was one brick wall after another. First of all the list is not published so you can't go to the high performers to search for strategies to improve your own student achievement. When I e-mailed our Special Education Department for information, thinking that there must be someone looking at high achievers and how to replicate their work, I received no response at all. And when I tried to question the process (Which children counted for me? If a child was in both Survey periods in my school but did not transfer to my class until the end of the second survey period, did that child count for me? Did all of the special education kids count for the general education teacher? How about those students who were on special standards? Who else was in my silo? Was I just considered with other inclusion classes or also with self-contained classes? Were all special Education teachers, regardless of what they teach, lumped together? and the list goes on), I was sent from person to person and really never got accurate answers. For the most part, it really seemed like they didn't know the answers, which begs the question, "Does anyone have their finger on the big picture?" When I went to the Union I was sent generic answers that basically said "see the web site." I yearn for a system of performance pay that would be an incentive to improve student achievement, instead of a mysterious system where teachers say, "I have no idea why I got it," and "I have no idea why I didn't get it." Transparency would go a long way.

With all that said, I am glad that some of our teachers will get a bonus because I believe that teachers certainly deserve it, but this is such a flawed system that you have to begin to ask, "Is it really worth it?" There are so many better ways to distribute performance pay, but our pay is so entwined in the political process, I wonder if it's possible to ever get it right? Our children deserve better!

P.S. - If any of my facts are incorrect, it is because the system is so cloaked in mystery and misinformation that it is difficult to get accurate facts. If I have misquoted in any way, I would be more than happy to write a retraction.

Five Year Olds Authors

I LOVE Kindergarten writing this time of year. Some children are just drawing pictures. Some of the pictures are just stick figures while others include many details and a rainbow of colors. The children are just beginning to understand that they can use letters to write some of the stories that they are able to tell in such detail. They are labeling their pictures -some with a single letter. Others are s-t-r-t-c-h-i-n-g out words and writing all of the sounds they here. Today a child even asked for a third piece of paper to continue her story. Some of the children write in straight lines that look like a long string of letters and others write their letters all over the paper. I think the reason I love writing this time of year is because I also know what it will look like at the end of the year and these baseline pieces will be a great reminder of where it all started.

A Little Bit of Readers' Workshop

We're four weeks into the first nine weeks and the children and teachers are settling into their routine. The Kindergarten Readers' Workshop begins with a short mini-lesson, usually working on how to retell a favorite story book. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Caps for Sale are all class favorites. Then the children go to the Work Session where they each have a bag of books to "read." The books include some of their favorite story books, nursery rhymes, and a couple of books from home. They also have little baggies of characters and props that help them retell the nursery rhymes they are learning in Skills Block and the stories that they love. As the students "read" independently, the teacher pulls children one-on-one to assess the level of their retelling. A paraprofessional or parent volunteer usually pulls a list of children independently to practice skills such as recognizing the alphabet letters and sounds. After about thirty minutes, the children come back together and the teacher chooses a child to demonstrate what s/he has practiced during independent reading. In this last week the teacher has chosen a child to close the Readers' Workshop by showing the class how she retells a favorite story. On another day she asks two children to show how they use their character pieces to retell another story and on still another day she asks a child to show how she changed her voice to represent the little billy goat, the middle-sized goat and the great big billy goat. Already these young kindergartners feel like they are READERS!

Report Cards and Grading

I hope you will forgive me as I vent for just a minute...

We are coming to the mid-term of the first nine weeks and still don't really know what the report card will look like this year!! For years we have known that our outdated report card did not align with our standards-based learning. A Committe to change the report card has been in existence for several years but we were told that the report card would be the last thing to change. So... we have limped along with a report card that did not represent the changes that we were making toward a Workshop model, hoping that a new, improved report card was on the way. Several years ago I even went with my Principal to a year's worth of report card committee meetings. Teachers in our school even piloted a report card that we felt better represented the way we were teaching. Those pilot teachers actually did the regular report card AND a pilot standard-based version to help us see how the two could be molded together. We took the information back to the Committee and then, as the year came to a close, went to a meeting where it seemed everything we had done all year had fallen on deaf ears. The Committee instead went with a draft that had nothing in common with the work teachers had done. That draft died in committee. That was my last report card Committee meeting.

Shift forward a few years and we now have a new computer-based Gradebook program with "No more bubble sheets!" Instead the Progress Report and Report Card will come from the new Gradebook. Sounds good - part of the paper reduction effort! We see a draft of a report card that seems like a major compromise for a county that calls itself standards-based with a conduct grade for every subject - even grades Science, Social Studies and Health - in Kindergarten! Oh my! Then we hear that the Union will not endorse the new report card because it didn't have teacher input. While I certainly appreciate the Union's voice, it leaves us now at the mid-term not sure exactly what the new report card or Progress Report will look like. We've been told the report card may look more like last year's but the Board has yet to approve anything as of this writing.

In the past week I have had countless e-mails asking how our school will be addressing the new report card and progress reports. Of course, everyone is asking, because nobody knows for sure what the design will actually be. So... (I'm through venting now - into problem solving mode) a group of our kinder teachers met today and decided that we had to be true to our beliefs. We would put grades in our gradebook that matched what we believe is good practice. Then if we need to tweak the system based on what it actually looks like, we will. We do not want to give grades just for the sake of giving grades. We want some common assessments to keep us on pace together and we want our assessments to be aligned to our standards and to actually inform, even drive, our daily instruction. With that in mind, I share this DRAFT of our work on the kindergarten wiki under Assessments. Tomorrow we will present it to the grade level and I expect there to be deep conversation... and changes.

Bloggers Cafe

About a year ago, our Instructional Technologist Melanie Holtsman, attended Google Teacher Academy in NYC to become a Google Certified Teacher. She brought back lots and lots of ideas from her adventure. One of those ideas was to establish a Bloggers Cafe as a professional learning area in the midst of our office space. We added comfortable seating and wireless availability. Today lots of formal and informal learning takes place in this new space.

Another idea that Melanie saw and loved was the way Google geeks jump on scooters to maneuver around the building, although she hasn't quite figured out a way to embrace that idea yet! However another idea she was able to adapt was the use of white boards for doodling. Melanie had white boards added around a column in our blogging space and now there's room for all sorts of fun and inspiration. This week someone suggested that we add funny tidbits from the first month of school that we've overheard children say! My personal favorites are, "dry erase markers taste wet, not dry!" and "Everything evil is a constipated teletubbie!" We've also doodled about our guesses for the new theme this year (by the way, nobody guessed it!), our favorite movies of all time, our favorite opening day moment, fun things we did over the summer break... No telling what we will be doodling about new week!

F.A.I.R. - AP1

We are in the midst of the Florida's new reading assessment/ diagnostic, F.A.I.R., that takes the place of DIBELS - AP1 or Assessment Period 1. One of the things that is new, besides the fact that the assessment is more comprehensive, is that Kindergarten teachers input the data on the computer as they are assessing each child individually. While this gives us access to instant data, it also means that the state and county have to have the infrastructure to make it happen. Not surprisingly, it seems that is not quite in place. We have struggled through not being able to get to the testing site, being kicked off while testing, and having data not save. Some of the problems are a result of our county computers and lack of bandwidth and some are problems at the state. If you are a kindergarten teacher, you know how dependent our youngsters are at this time of year so we are stealing minutes at a time to try to get the assessments done. To have technical glitches is so frustrating and such a loss of instructional time during these crucial early days.

This, of course, is a huge endeavor to try to get computerized assessment statewide. I can remember having many conversation with Governor Jeb Bush six years ago about this happening because it was one of his dreams for the state. As I attended meetings as the state Teacher of the Year during that time, I realized how very complex this was to do when each county had implemented a different technology system. The vision seemed so easy - all student taking computerized assessment that would input into the state to provide the state, county, school, teacher and parents with instant data to drive instructional decisions. His vision included the FCAT, our state assessment, being computerized to provide that same timely information. Can you imagine having students take the FCAT and then pulling up the results as soon as they finish?

The frustrations this week have been many. Some of the problems are with our county - computers that don't work and not having enough computers for labs or not having sufficient bandwidth with so many people on the system at the same time. Some of the problems are with our state. However, when you just can't get into the testing site all day or you're booted off in the middle of an assessment, or you give an assessment and it doesn't save, it doesn't really matter who is to blame. A teacher has limited time to complete the assessment and when you're in kindergarten you have very limited time that the students are independent enough that you can test a student individually! Oh my! You grab a few seconds here and a few seconds there, so when the technology is the problem, it is even more frustrating.

While this assessment promises comprehensive and timely data that we have never had before in the early grades, right now the technology glitches are overshadowing the possibilities. I certainly hope the county and state can figure it all out so that we can get about the business of educating our youngsters.

Joys in Life

One of the things that makes Chets Creek such a fun and special place to work is that we enjoy being together and we celebrate together. We really are an extended family. Today the Kindergarten Team had a surprise celebration for Barbara Ellis, last year's "Chets Creek Employee of the Year," because tomorrow is Barbara's 65th birthday!!! Barbara came to us about seven years ago after her husband retired and they returned from overseas. Barbara's daughter and daughter-in-law, Debby Cothern and Michelle Ellis, both teach at Chets and at the time her grandchildren were students at the Creek. Barbara had been a paraprofessional before her husband left to work overseas and so after they returned she joined the Chets Creek team, partially to be near her daughters and grands. She didn't really need to work, but she loved the work. Her daughter and daughter-in-law co-teach and there have been years when Barbara worked in their room! Now however, the grandchildren have graduated from elementary school, but we are so fortunate that Barbara has stayed with us. She's one of reasons that Chets Creek is so strong. Not only is Barbara efficient and organized - not only is she kind and caring, but she's just experienced about life. She's your mother, your grandmother if you're a little one, your best friend. We are a better school because Barbara chooses to spend her time with us. Here's to the next twenty years! May they be even better than the last twenty - if that's possible!!

Chets Creek is full of moments like this. Earlier this week we celebrated the upcoming wedding of Kinder teacher Laura Stewart with a bridal shower given by the grade level. This morning we offered our families a chance to eat breakfast together at a Pancake Breakfast sponsored by the Dads of Chets Creek. At lunch we celebrated with a tailgate party, showing our spirit by dressing according to our loyalties, sponsored by our Social Committee. This is a place that teaches children by example. We teach children to live together as a community by celebrating the small moments in their lives and in our lives. We teach children to value and uplift each other with these types of activities. Don't get me wrong- we have the same challenges that other big schools have today. A child lost her mother this week after a long battle with cancer. Another child confided unimaginable stories of abuse to a teacher. A parent tried to bully his way through Administration by demanding a face-to-face meeting with another parent because the other child said something he perceived as offensive to his child. The list goes on and on of unspeakable hurt and anger. Certainly we could go on and on about the troubles with society today, but we choose instead to continue to reinforce to our children through our examples what healthy, nurturing relationships look like and feel like. We want our children to grab hold of life and soar through the possibilities. That is what people like Barbara Ellis stand for at Chets Creek. May we continue to imprint those life lessons on the generations to come. May we continue to be that shining light in the storm. May we always embrace this part of our mission as educators.

STARS

STARS stands for Students Are Reading Silently and that's what students do in the mornings before school begins. As children begin to come into the building in the mornings their classes have an assigned place to sit in the hallway. Also in the hallway is a wagon full of good books. The child can bring a book from home, put their library book in their back pack or choose from the books provided in the wagon, but the goal is for every child to read. Patrols and teacher assistants monitor the hallways.

Today was the first day for our youngest readers to sit in the hallway and read. Until now they have been in the Dining Room. Now, however, they have had mini-lessons on how to "read" a book by looking at the pictures and they are ready to join the rest of the school in this early morning routine.

Kindergarten Open House

Tonight parents gathered at Chets Creek for Open House - a chance for parents to meet the teachers and see what their students are doing. In Haley Alvarado's Kindergarten Open House she had the children go through a modified day. She started with bringing the kids to the carpet just like she starts every day, reviewed letters and sound with a song, reviewed today's "Star Student" activities, and sang "Humpty Dumpty" with motions as examples of the Skills Block activities that the children do every day. Next the children sang the Readers' Workshop song and then went to their independent reading bags to show their parents what they are "reading" each day. The students then gathered back at the carpet and went into Writers' Worskhop. Once again they went to their seats to show their parents their writing folder. Time for Math - so the children sang one of the days of the week songs that they have been learning. They ended the day like they often do by gathering in a circle to talk about social studies or science skills. Tonight they talked about their family and went around the room talking about their brothers and sisters. A quick review of homework expectations and then the time quickly had come to an end! What a wonderful way for parents to get a quick glimpse into the Kindergarten day!

Chick-fil-A Family Night

Chets Creek does so many things to support quality family time. Tonight was just another Chets Creek event for families to enjoy. The local Chick-fil-A supported a Chets Creek night from 6:00-8:00. Chick-fil-A provided the bounce house, games and activities that included balloons, face painting, clowns, a little dancing in the streets and of course, delicious food. The school, for promoting the night, receives 10% of the proceeds from the two hours. This is such a wholesome and wonderful way for corporate businesses to promote education and family fun. Many of the Chets Creek faculty along with the Administrative and Office Team who sponsored this night, were out and about mingling with the families. The school will support a Family Night at the local Chick-fil-A the first Tuesday of every month. Each month will be supported by a specific grade levels. And so as the Chick-fil-A cow says, " come join us and eat mor chikin!"

Saddle Up for Skills Block

Skills Block is the foundation of the early weeks in Kindergarten. This standard-based bulletin board showcases the multiplicity of work that is going on in the Kindergarten classes.

Skills Block starts with a warm-up. It is usually a review of an activity from the day before such as clapping syllables, rhyming, beginning sounds, recognizing letters and sound, etc.

Nursery rhymes are the backbone of our program in phonemic awareness. Students work on skills such as hearing beginning sounds, blending, and segmenting that will help them hear the individual sounds as they write words and will help them blend sounds as they read words.

"Star Names" is our phonics program where we use the names of the students to introduce the class to letters and sounds. The children LOVE this activity and can't wait until it is their turn to be the star student! The teachers sing songs and chants with the letters of each name, cut the letters apart and put them back together, interview the student and write sentences, etc. This program will continue until each child has had a turn being the star.

Each day the teacher chooses one student to lead the ABC activities. The student chant and sing the letters and the sounds each day.

Skills Centers or "Table Work" as it is called in some classrooms, offer the children a chance to work independently on the skills they are learning. In this classroom the children spend 10 minutes each day working through one of six centers that are meant to practice the current skills.

This is a great bulletin board for Open House, which will be later this week, to help parents "see" all of the activities that children are doing each morning! This is truly a peek into the classroom.

Ropin' in Kindergarten Writers

It's time for the first standard-based bulletin board of the kindergarten year. The Mall-ards carry through with their Honky Tonk theme with "Ropin' in Kindergarten Writers." They feature the work of three of their writers. In each story, the writer first told his story over three pages with the beginning on the first page, the middle on the second page, and the end on the third page. Next the writer drew pictures over several days staying inside the small moment of the story. He also used letters to write some of the words that he wanted to write. In the example below the author wrote about finding a conch in the puddles under the pier on the first page. On the next page he draws about climbing a sand hill and on the final page he draws about telling his dad to hurry up and get under the canopy. This young author had no trouble telling the story he draws in his pictures. What a great honky tonk bulletin board that offers a window into the instruction in this classroom!

Roaring Retellings

One of my favorite "Star Books" is The Three Billy Goats Gruff. This standard-based bulletin board from Mrs. Alvarado's class actually shows the words from the book and then the teacher's dictation of three children reading that same section of the book. Using the scale developed by Elizabeth Sulzby and refined by Lucy Calkins, Mrs. Alvarado assesses each passage. The assessment helps her know what the next step is in conferring with each child. In the case where the child's retelling begins to sound so much like the story language in the book that it sounds like the child is reading instead of just retelling the story, the teacher knows that the child is ready for conventional reading.

Rockin' Retellings

"Rockin' Retellings" is a standard-based bulletin board from Julia Lewis' Kindergarten class that chronicles the work that we do to support oral retellings. On this bulletin board the teacher shows four different activities that the children did to help them with retelling "Caps for Sale."

This first example shows a child that has drawn the story "Caps for Sale" in pictures. The child is practicing retelling by drawing the sequence of the story.

In this example the children have learned a song with motions that describe the sequence of events in the story, "Caps for Sale." Moving through this sequential order will help the student as he retells the story later by looking at the pictures in the book.

In this example the children play the parts of the major characters, the peddler and the monkeys. As the children play the parts of the story, they practice the dialogue and story language in the book.

In this final example the teacher actually recorded the oral retelling of a student as she looked at the pictures and told the story of "Caps for Sale" during her independent reading time. This is the goal of the other activities. All of this extra work on oral retelling will pay off in spades as the children write retellings later in the year. Stay tuned as this group moves through the year!

Star Books - Caps for Sale

Just like the children have practiced retelling The Three Billy Goats Gruff they are also retelling Caps for Sale early in the kindergarten year. They practice retelling these classic stories so that when we ask them to "read" the story in the next few weeks, they will be able to look at the pictures and retell the story using the sequence, prosody and story language from the book. The teacher will use the Sulzby-Calkins rating scale to evaluate how well each child retells the story. When the child is retelling the story so that it sounds like they are reading it, although they are really retelling it, and they have made the letter-sound connection in their writing, they are ready for conventional reading. While this is the "work" of Readers' Workshop it is also so much fun for the children! They love playing the part of the peddler but they equally love playing the part of a monkey.

Retelling of Caps For Sale from Cheryl Dillard on Vimeo.

F.A.I.R.

The F.A.I.R. (Florida Assessment for Instruction in Reading) developed by the Florida Center for Reading Research in collaboration with Just Read, Florida is in its inaugural trial all over our state. This assessment will taking the place of the DIBELS assessment that we have used for many years. In grades 3-5, students will actually take the assessment on the computer! In grades K-2 the teacher will directly input the data into the computer as the students individually work through each section!

Is our technology department really ready for this? When we first had training last Spring, teachers began asking if we really had the infrastructure to pull this off? To help with the bandwidth, the county is rolling the testing out in eight waves so that everyone will not be testing at exactly the same time. Our school is in the last, the eighth wave but in order to troubleshoot and get an idea of what the roll out will look like for us, we visited another school on their first day. The school was FULL of computer glitches! We are hoping, however, that by the time we roll out in the eighth wave, most of those glitches will be addressed!

For our first Early Release day this year we began training our staff on this new assessment. Kindergarten, first and second grade each divided to get information specific to their grade level. Third through fifth grades met in the computer lab, just like their students will do. Really, the assessment itself looks promising. In Kindergarten we will be giving a Broad Screening that will include Letter Naming and Blending for this first assessment period and then two sections in the Broad Diagnostic Screening that include Listening Comprehension and Vocabulary. It's the first time we've included assessment in comprehension and vocabulary for our youngest learners in a standardized manner. For some students we will drill down further by giving subsections of a Targeted Diagnostic Inventory. The assessment also includes the ability to monitor progress in targeted areas with graphs generated on the computer which will be important information for our Rti efforts and even has links to teaching activities and resources. Can this assessment actually deliver on all that it promises? That, of course, is the BIG question. For now, however, the bigger question is, do we have the computer and technology capacity in our county to even complete the assessments? Stay tuned...

Skills Block

Skills Block in these early weeks of kindergarten include two parts. One part is the phonemic awareness that we teach through Nursery Rhymes. The other is a program that we call "Star Names." The idea of using the children's names to review and in some cases introduce the letters and sounds is not an original idea. Patricia Cunningham talks about beginning the kindergarten year with the children's names in Month-by-Month Reading and Writing for Kindergarten, but we actually brought the idea back from a Lucy Calkins' Summer Workshop at Teachers' College at Columbia University in NYC. Names are something that children are intimately familiar with and something that they are get excited about.

In our "Star Names" program we spotlight one child each day. The teachers show the children how to write each letter in the child's name and then cut the name apart encouraging individual children to put it back together. Later, these name letters will be put in a pocket chart at a center for the children to match to pictures. Next most classes chant the letters or sing a song highlighting the initial sound. The Star child is also interviewed and the class makes up sentences about the Star practicing stretching out the words and writing the sounds that they hear. Then the children think of other words that start with the same letter/sound as the Star child's name. As the days go on, the activities will get a little more difficult.

Finally the children describe the Star child and then return to their seats to draw a picture of the child. They write their own name and the name of the Star child and many of the children will try to write words and sentences about the child. This is the beginning of children making the connection between the letters they see and the sounds they hear. For other resources, check our kindergarten wiki - Skills Star Names.

A Sense of Belonging

Jennifer Allen makes me want to pack up and move to Maine! I am not a cold weather gal, but her new book A Sense of Belonging, is a new resoucre packed with suggestions for sustaining and retaining new teachers. I would love to live in a state that not only spouts the statistics but actually does something about them. "17% of educators leave teaching after one year, 30% after two years, 40% after three years and hearly half after five years." We know this to be true so Jennifer Allen, Literacy Coach, presents many possibilities for intensive, sustained professional development for the new teachers at her school: observing the coach, teaching how to administer and analyze assessments, offering in-class support, meeting as a group of new teachers, observing peers, using student work to guide instruction, offering on-going professional development on curriculum planning, and study groups. She presents each idea with "tried and true" experience and suggestions. Some of the ideas are not possible in our situation and many we already have embedded in our weekly Teacher Meetings but the validity of each makes me want to figure out a way to make sure each happens in my own school setting.

For instance, she suggests making sure that new teachers are allowed to observe their peers. In her case, the stumbling block early on was teachers opening up their rooms for the observations. In our case, our school is very open. Teachers welcome observers and they have many. We have always allowed new teachers to spend a day observing teachers of their choice. Just last week, new teacher Mary Beth asked to observe four different teachers on her grade level. She wanted to see Carrie's Skills Block, Tenean and Danielle's Readers' Workshop, Laurie's Writers' Workshop and Deb and Michelle's Math Workshop. She was proactive and knew what she wanted to see and who she wanted to watch. She just sent an e-mail after her day observing: "I cannot thank you enough for today. It was a WONDERFUL learning experience. Each teacher was so helpful and professional. Carrie even changed her schedule for me and let me video tape her doing her sound cards. Now I will have time to reflect on all I saw over the long weekend." While that's a good start, one of our frustrations has been that we want teachers to see more demonstration lessons and we'd like for them to have some choice so they can guide their own learning - much like Mary Beth did.

One of the things that Jennifer suggests is that teachers go in a group so that they can debrief with teachers who have seen the same lesson. As I am trying to see how this would look in my school, I am thinking that we could offer once a month demonstration lessons. We would schedule a demonstration lesson. Guided reading comes up every year as something teachers want to know more about, so suppose we schedule a primary observation so a teacher could see three guided reading groups - one in K, one in 1st grade, and one in 2nd, back-to-back. While this is designed for new teachers, any teacher that is interested could sign up for the opportunity to visit. They would have a guiding sheet that would ask them to list things they wondered about and then ways they could use what they see in their own classroom. Their committment would be to meet with the group after school for a half hour and debrief what they had seen or maybe that could even be worked into the half day. To take best advantage of the subs we would have to get, we would offer a similar opportunity in the intermediate school in the afternoon. In this way teachers could choose the topics that they wanted to know more about. Now this has possibilities!