Homecoming

Tonight Cara Stieglitz was named Homecoming Queen at Fletcher High School. High Schools all over the country are naming Homecoming Queens this time of year but what makes this story so very special is that Cara is a young lady with Downs Syndrome. Twelve years ago Cara's mom, Melanie, sat with Kerry Rogers and me and suggested that she wanted Cara to be included in our Kindergarten class full time. Although inclusion was the new buzz word, it was not really being done in Duval County at the time - at least not with students who had the significant challenges that Cara had. As we sat there, Melanie honestly explained Cara's abilities - and her challenges - and laid out her plan. I guess Kerry and I could have said no but I think we all knew that the legal system was behind Melanie if it ever came to that - not that she ever pushed or demanded. She was the perfect blend of "let's give it a try" and "I'll be there to support you every step of the way" - and she was. Kerry and I never hesitated. I think we knew even then that it was the right thing to do. Every time we stumbled - and we did - we simply went back to the drawing board to figure out how we could rearrange things so they would work.

Kindergarten is a good time for inclusion. Children at that age are very accepting of differences. It was easy to get children to partner with Cara. Most of them enjoyed being selected to be her helper. That's not to say everything went smoothly, but when we did have bumps in the road, Melanie made it easy to call her and sit down and work through solutions. By the end of the year, Kerry and I were very pleased with the outcomes. Although Cara had not mastered all of the kindergarten academic skills, she had made good, consistent progress and she had certainly matured socially. She had learned to navigate the kindergarten classroom and playground. She had friends. And the other children in that class had learned from Cara. In fact they had learned the most. They had learned how to be helpful without doing it for her. They had learned empathy.

I kept up with Cara on and off as she went through school. I would run into Melanie every now and then after I left Alimacani for Chets Creek. I remember she called me once and told me that Cara had been invited to her first sleepover. I think we both cried. As the years went by, every year had its challenges, but Melanie stood strong as Cara's advocate. She was never unreasonable, but she would not be pushed around either. She stood firm when she needed to and compromised when she needed to. She actively sought out the best teachers and the best programs for Cara and left no stone unturned to help her along the way. When I got Melanie's e-mail that Cara had been nominated by her bowling coach to serve on this year's Homecoming Court, I cried. I couldn't have been prouder.

My hat is also off to the students at Fletcher. Many of them have known Cara since that first year at Alimacani. They have watched her grow and mature. I am sure they have seen her fall too, but they have also seen her pick herself up and with more determination than ever, take the next step. Many of them must have been willing to forgo a vote for a friend in order to make this dream possible for Cara. That shows a group of students who had the maturity to understand the bigger picture. The smile on Cara's face tonight says it all, but this is not only a victory for one little girl, it is a victory of an entire community. The Stieglitz family serves as an example of what can be accomplished when families and educators work together - when they can put aside their own personal needs and wants and do what is best for a child! Congratulations Queen Cara! May your reign be an inspiration to us all!

Read this follow up article.

My Life as a Writer

I guess I've always been a writer, but as a young student I don't ever remember being taught to write or any teacher ever encouraging me to write. I do remember being in middle school and the teacher assigning a creative writing assignment. We had to write about "Red." I don't really remember what I wrote but I do remember the pieces that the teacher read out loud and I remember being blown away because they were so-o-o- good. None of the stuff that they wrote ever popped into MY head! I remember thinking that I could NEVER write like that!

Even as a young child, however, I liked to write. I had a diary. I remember writing long journal entries about everything in my life. I also remember destroying a couple of the diaries because I was afraid my mother would find them! As a young wife I wrote furiously in a journal trying to figure out how to learn to live with another person. I really didn't have a good role model for being a good wife so none of it came naturally for me. My husband used to call it my "hate" journal because I was more likely to be writing when things weren't going well or I was really upset! I still think I do my best writing when I'm fired up about something. It's easy to write with voice - with passion and emotion when I care deeply about an issue.

While I was home on my second maternity leave, my writing took a dramatic turn. I had been leading a mixed group of teachers who had been meeting together once a week for a couple of years to share teaching ideas - I guess I understood collegiality way before it was the newest buzz word - and while I was out with my second baby I decided to finish the document that we had been working on for those two years. It was ideas around teaching a letter of the week to beginning readers. I had been keeping notes on all of our ideas so I decided to complete the research that we never seemed to have time to finish as a gift to the teachers when I returned. It was their idea that I try to have it published after they realized how much additional work I had put into our original ideas. I thought it was lark but decided to send the manuscript off to six publishers. I knew so little about publishing but within two weeks I had a contract for my first book. However, there were many delays and it was not published until five years later in 1991, A is Amazing. I just happened to submit a manuscript that a particular publisher was looking for at that particular time so the contract was immediate, but the publisher was going through some editorial changes that caused many delays and frustrations. Now, of course, the idea of "letter of the week" has fallen out of favor and of course, the book is out of print, but at the time it became a best seller for the company and within 6 months I had a contract for another book and so it went. I published 10 books with that company over the next few years.

In the meantime I had been publishing ideas in The Mailbox and they invited me to a Summer Writing Institute where I joined eight other authors from across the country that were all doing freelance work for the The Education Center which publishes The Mailbox Magazines. I went to Greensboro, NC for two summers to learn to write the "Mailbox" way and it was both intimidating and awesome. At the summer retreat I met three other teacher-writer-moms who lived in different parts of the country. We decided to propose a series of books to The Education Center while we were there and to our surprise, they accepted our proposal. It was a first for them to have collaborators outside their direct organization make a proposal.  For the next four years the four of us wrote books using e-mail. It was before Google Docs or any of the on-line pieces that make cooperative writing so much easier. It was cumbersome but it was the first time The Education Center had a completed manuscript that was done outside of their offices that didn't require major revision. Those three women were funny, creative, and wonderful co-writers and I am richer for having known and worked with each one of them. Just remembering that time in my life puts a smile on my face!

During those ten years I wrote or co-authored 19 books for teachers. When I think about it now, I am awed by how prolific I was and I am proud of that accomplishment. I could not have done it if my husband had not been so willing to take up the slack. He learned to wash clothes and dishes during those years as I often wrote through the night to meet a deadline while I taught full time. I tried for my writing not to take time away from my children and so I wrote late at night, very early in the mornings, and while they were away with friends. I loved it, but there came a time when I felt it was taking too much of my time... so before my daughter left home, I decided to put down the pen and spend time with her. It was a good decision.

In the meantime, I joined a new faculty and began a steep learning curve into a new chapter in my life. I haven't really been moved to take on a book project or at least, when I thought maybe I wanted to, things just didn't seem to piece together easily so that I really felt it was what I was suppose to do. I usually get very clear messages about what I am suppose to be doing - nothing like the burning bush, of course, but still pretty clear! Today I write on a more immediate level. I have written about the work I'm doing now in magazines and for some on-line publications, when asked, and I love blogging about my work. I work with incredible teachers. I've written some units for and with the teachers I work with now and then have sent them out to anyone that wanted them. That actually has been very gratifying.

While I have written on topics that I was asked to write on, that kind of writing is like writing to a prompt. My best writing comes when I just have something noddling around in my head and I just can't seem to get rid of it unless I write about it. Some of that writing is so emotional that it will never see the light of day and some of it is just my ramblings about things in my personal life but some of it has a purpose and involves things I want to share about the work that I am lucky enough to do now.

I am not, nor will I ever be, the world's greatest writer. I don't write deep pieces with great thoughts that will change the world. I don't write "funny," because actually I'm not really a very funny person. I just write about the world as I see it and hope that something I say might resonate and make a difference...

I do believe that the varied experiences that I have had have made me a better writing teacher. I think I understand many of the reasons that people write and I realize that children need to learn to write for many different reasons. It is my job to release the inner writer's voice that is in each of my children so that whatever it is that they will need to do, they will be equipped to do it - whether it's texting or therapy or writing the next great novel. Here's to that writer in each of us!

After the school day...

I got an e-mail this week from our Instructional Coach, Suzanne Shall. She forwarded an e-mail from a Teach for America teacher in an inner city school who asked for some writing samples from our students. I was happy to comply. This teacher came after school one day this week to pick up the samples. She is sharing them with a group of teachers that meet regularly to help them understand that we need to have high expectations of all of our students.

I had the opportunity to share with her my own "aha!" experience with high expectations. I had the amazing opportunity of being sent to Columbia University's Teachers' College for a Summer Institute to study with Lucy Calkins soon after I transferred to Chets Creek. Professionally, it was life changing. I had been with kindergarten students for several years in a high performing school and I really thought I had very high expectations for all students, but when I went to NYC and watched video after video of kindergarten students from some of the most diverse and poverty stricken areas of the city, who were able to talk about their writing and their reading in ways that I could never have imagined kindergartners doing, it changed forever what I would expect of our youngest learners. So I know what a difference it can make to actually see children doing things that you once thought impossible.

As I gave this teacher the writing samples, I invited her to tour some of our first grade classrooms, even though the students had left for the day. She spend the next hour with me walking and talking our way through first grade. We went first into Maria Mallon and Cheryl Dillard's classroom and they spent some time answering questions and sharing the way that they see things. I am always so proud to take visitors through our classrooms because I think - I hope, that it is obvious that we are collaborative, that professional development is embedded into the very pores of our existence and that we depend on professional conversation to make each of us better. I like for our teachers to also hear from teachers in other schools so that they can be as thankful as I am that we have made AYP each year and are not under some of the restrictive guidelines that would sap our professional time and energy. Because we have such freedom to envisions where we think are students should be, we sometimes forget what is going on in other parts of our country, our state, county. I also like for them to hear the different challenges that other teachers face and how their solutions and professional development, even though it is very different from what we do, can give us ideas to feed our own creative possibilities. We then went down to Debbie Harbour and Tenean Alleyne's classroom and even though they were getting ready for their Awards Ceremony the following week, they also stopped to have conversation with this teacher that they didn't know and hadn't expected. I think that's one of the things that we do well - we share and look to visitors as much to get information as to give it. We finished by stopping into Haley Alvarado and Denise Donofrio's classroom. Even though they had left for the day I felt completely comfortable taking her into their room, poking around in their student work and sharing with her some of the charts and work that I saw around the room. I am sure that they would have not minded because we have so many visitors walking through our classrooms that our teachers and our students are very comfortable with teachers snapping pictures, asking questions, and taking notes.

Of course, as so often happens, I was the one that really benefited from the visit. I was reminded of the enthusiasm and urgency that so many teachers at our inner city schools feel because they really are changing a generation of students. Their work is changing the direction of lives. Even with what must seem like insurmountable odds at times, they are making a difference and when you see the determination, the ability and the urgency in teachers like this one - who took her own time and initiative to come across town and look for answers - you know how fortunate our profession is. We would all be better teachers if we could find a way to collaborate in this bigger family of educators...

Moments that Make Me Smile

As we wrap up the day. I sometimes play the "Skittles quiz" with the class. The quiz is simply me asking questions that review the day and kids get a single Skittle if they answer correctly. As I was reviewing the afternoon before our Mem Fox Celebration, I asked the kids what we would be doing first thing in the morning. To open our Mem Fox Celebration, we were going to be Skyping a first grade teacher in Australia. It would be the middle of the night for her! We were very excited in anticipation, but the students were not really familiar with Skype so most of them didn't really know what to expect. When I asked them, "Who remembers what we will be doing in the morning?" one of the kiddos piped up, "We're gonna be skyping the fox!" I would love to see the picture in his mind! It made me smile.

Last week we were stamping on fake "tatoos" of pumpkins and bats. We were using wooden stamps and acrylic paint and asking the children if they wanted the stamps on their face or on their arms. As one of the little girls sat down, she pulled the collar of her dress down to show the space right over her breast and said, "Can I have mine right here? My mom has hers right here." We said, "Absolutely not!" but it still made me smile! My day is full of those small moments that make me smile for I know from experience that I’ll look back and realize all of these funny little moments add up to something special, something important, something irreplaceable.

Science Instruction

Being back in the classroom full time this year means that I have taken on Science and math instruction for the first time in many years. This week I was responsible for planning our first grade Science instruction and I found myself in charge of a unit about the Earth's Structure and how the land and water of the surface can change. I guess it sounds simple enough, but I realized for the first time why Science in the primary school has not moved further along. First of all, the District has done some work giving us Resources in the form of a District curriculum aligned with state standards and we do have an adopted series that isn't very aligned... but that's it. There are no lessons to teach. You only have the standards, some resources and a pacing guide that tells you when to teach what.

Our first grade Science lead teacher recognized this right off and so we have had our grade level teachers organize and write some lessons. The problem, of course, is that many of us do not have strong Science content backgrounds and we are not really familiar with the depth of the content, so we don't understand the continuum of the content K-5. Although we know that our students will learn better by experiencing labs and experiments, we don't really know how to best set those up, so the lessons that we write are just a beginning. As I looked at the lessons for this week, I had to really think about if the lesson REALLY taught the concept I thought I wanted the students to understand. It didn't. So I spent probably three hours a night for three or four nights trying to understand the big picture and looking for a lab experience that might engage the students - time I surely did not have! Finally I felt like I had an idea for a lab that might work - didn't really know for sure! Next, I needed to find or buy the materials for the lab. About $15 later I had everything I thought I needed for a 20 minute lab demonstration! This was one week's lab.

So why hasn't Science moved forward in primary classroom? In my opinion, it is because

• teachers lack the Scientific background knowledge that they need
• teachers lack "outside the classroom time" to gain the knowledge that they need
• there is not sufficient "on the clock" time and professional development for teachers to learn what they need to know
• Science money and supplies are not readily available in the school. It takes both the money to purchase the supplies and then the time to buy them off the clock

I don't think anyone at my school will be surprised by my observations. I think by forming a Science Council and by having a lead Science teacher at each grade level they have recognized the needs, but I'm not sure it's enough to roll out the type of instruction that is needed in K-2 to support a 5th grade state assessment. The 5th Grade certainly can't be expected to build ALL of the knowledge in a single year. They have to expect teachers in the lower grades to build a foundation for them to build upon. So what's the answer? I am sure with the creative and dedicated people that I work with, that we will figure it out. In the meantime feel free to leave your suggestions!

Three Blind Mice!

What a fun day! The children arrived this morning dressed as their favorite book character. They began with a parade around the bottom floor of the school, slapping the hands of upperclassmen lining both sides of the hallway and entering the Dining Room to their parents' flashing camera lights. They paraded back to the room to enjoy fall centers: Making Autumn colored leaves sponge painted with fall tempera and then washed in water to make the colors run, a wreath of jack-o-lantern shapes, using permanent pens to paint real miniature pumpkins, stringing fall colored beads and foam shapes to make a Fall necklace, colorful Fall trees with the hand and forearm used as the tree shape and finger prints used for the Fall leaves, pumpkins and bat acrylic tattoos, and decorating sugar cookies to look like pumpkins. As the children went to lunch the teachers prepared the room for a second set of Fall activities that included cutting a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern, predicting the number of seeds, estimating the circumference of the pumpkin, using pattern blocks to vote on a design to cut the jack-o-lantern eyes, nose, and mouth (triangle eyes, a rhombus nose and a trapezoid mouth with rhombus fangs!) and finally decorating a group picture to take home. And, of course, there were a few festive read alouds in between activities. It was a day of fun but also included applying some of the skills we have been learning into problem solving activities.

The evening brought the children back to school as the teachers passed out candy around the bottom floor and the children converged on the playground to find rides and jumping houses and food and games! It was a carnival night for families and just good fellowship with friends. This elaborate celebration is a combination of work between teachers, administration and loads and loads of parents. This reminds me that schools are still the center of many communities.

SmartBoards

As our school went into the 10 day count at the beginning of the year, we added teachers. One of those teachers was Rebecca Roberts, an experienced first grade teacher, who had recently moved to the Jacksonville area. Rebecca is doing safety net work in the mornings in first grade but in the afternoons she has joined our classroom for Math and Science. Rebecca had SmartBoard training at her previous school where she used the Board daily. We only have two SmartBoards in our building. One was part of a technology package that was a gift to each of the state Teachers of the Year during my reign. While the technology package was given personally to the teachers, I decided to have my technology housed at my school. I can't imagine what I would have done with it at home! I did have enough professional development with the SmartBoard to have a good idea of how engaging it could be to children! Since returning to Chets, I haven't had my own classroom so the SmartBoard has been housed with several different primary teachers, but no one, except maybe the Media Specialist, has actually had training on the ways that a SmartBoard can be used in a classroom. When Rebecca came into our room, it was the perfect opportunity to see the SmartBoard in action. Today was our first lesson as Rebecca taught our Calendar Math lesson on the Board! As predicted, the students were glued to the screen! I can't wait to see this piece of technology actually used on a daily basis. I've followed the pros and cons of SmartBoards in the classroom, so it will be a nice treat to actually see for myself. Are they worth the money? We'll see...