Ginny’s norm

Last spring, when our primary teachers gathered for a work session that became known as “the Summit,” a veteran teacher volunteered to begin by reviewing our norms.  She ended up adding one of her own.  Her wish was that we, her colleagues, be the kind of students we all want in our classrooms:  curious, eager learners, working to increase knowledge and performance, listening and supporting one another.

Our staff continues to have uncomfortable meetings as we wrestle with teacher performance standards, trying to describe goals for ourselves and our students, seeking supporting evidence that demonstrates success.  While we stretch and pull and poke each other in the process,  I find myself reflecting on “Ginny’s norm” as it has come to be known.

Feeling the frustration in the room I think about my students – the youngest in the school with the farthest to go – and conjure my inner 4 year old.  A preschooler has no concept of bottom and top, beginning and end, success and failure.  It is just an exciting journey everyday and a whole body experience. The only request I hear from these children is that they have a friend to sit with.

That’s a nice norm too.

reflection prep

“You are such a reflective person, I should probably just read your blog and skip reviewing your ILP with you.”

This comment from my principal is the prompt for this blog entry.  It was made in reference to a meeting I have scheduled with him on Monday to review my Individual Learning Plan for the year and reflect on my learning.  I took a quick peek at my blog entries for the past two months.  I’m not sure reading them would offer much insight about what I’ve learned this year.

Since I need to do the reflection work anyway to be ready for my meeting, here’s a blog entry that does summarize what I think I’ve learned this year.  It is easy for me to describe what I think I’ve learned this year but real evidence is harder to point to.

This is the evidence I would bring to a court room of my peers to document what I consider to be my most significant learning this year:
1) My teacher journal of my writing models I did for my students.  I created a “journal” out of a large painter’s tablet I got at Michael’s.  I wanted to make a “yellow book” just like my student’s books.  This year, I was more intentional in how I used assessments of my student’s work and quarterly benchmarks to guide the types of entries I modeled for my students. I spent more time in the fall working with my students to create recognizable figures than I did last year – which leads me to my second piece of evidence.
2) My student’s journals.  I didn’t introduce my journals until the end of September.  By then, every student had watched me draw pictures in my journal for two weeks.  Last year, many of the first entries in my student’s journals were scribbles.  This year, I only had 3 students whose first entries looked more like scribbles than figures.  I try to go through my student’s work on a regular basis, pulling entries as they meet each benchmark.  The benchmarks are new this year.  By March, I had 72% of my kindergarten bound students at 3rd quarter goals.  One of those students is on an IEP for speech,language and cognitive needs, 88% are ESL.  I’m in the middle of my 4th quarter assessments but I’m afraid they are about the same.  I wish I could say that 90% had met standard.  I would have to have 9/11 students doing 4th quarter work! The good news is that of the 5 that are returning to preschool next year, all of them are either at first or second quarter benchmarks right now. (My three most capable learners were my students last year so preschool intervention definitely made an impact.)
3) My daily curriculum plans.  I have to submit these to Head Start administrators and they have to document how I individualized for students and meet Head Start mandates.  Because of our federal review this year,  I’ve tweaked and re-tweaked these plans. I checked in with other colleagues to see the templates they use. I think I’ve finally come up with a template that really reflects the thought I put into my plans and the supports I’m trying to provide for my students.
4) Video recordings of myself conferring with students.  Yup, I did it.  I made tapes of myself working with students.  I even got Maestra to do some of her work. Doing the recordings taught me something about myself as a learner, and using a protocol with my principal to review and debrief the videos provided another layer to the learning experience.
5) Student portfolios. How does a student portfolio provide evidence of my learning? The choices I’ve made about the components of that portfolio are indicative of the work my students are doing in the classroom and what my primary emphasis for that learning has been: each page shows an aspect of oral language, fine motor skills and/or social emotional growth. I also developed two new tools to monitor student progress; one shows student progress on the continuum of written and oral language work, the other describes the students aspects of learning – or engagement.

Weekend homework done!  I know I’ll review the questions my principal sent out to staff in anticipation of the reflection process but I don’t think I’m going to find much more to say.

taking it to the streets

Maestra has been struggling to support Solomon in his journal.  After our last session with David Matteson, she tried a new tactic.

Maestra took paper over to the block center and sat with Solomon as he played.  He started talking about going fishing with his dad.  As he described his story, Maestra drew a picture, asking for input about details – the boat, the fish, the pole.  At some point she invited Solomon to draw a few things in the picture himself, which he did.  When the story was complete and Maestra and Solomon had reviewed it a few times, she told him  they would draw it again the next day and she expected Solomon to draw more of it himself.

Later that day he surprised her by drawing the story on the white board,

and as promised the next day, he drew the whole thing in his journal with Maestra at his side to encourage and support his work. 

He was very proud of his entry.

I was proud of Maestra.  I know that I have made the suggestion about taking paper to the various centers before, but she hadn’t “heard” me.  She questioned David about strategies for supporting our preschoolers to find topics and when he made the suggestion about drawing student play, she finally got it.

The student work and stories that have been happening this past week have been amazing.