MCC Friday Reflections

Over time the classroom becomes a tight-knit community. Students and teachers spend some 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 9 months a year--together. We watch many of them grow from the kindergarten years right on into the middle school years. We send them off with a tug at our hearts and a prideful gleam in our eyes. Over this time students and teachers get to know one another, care about one another, and stand up for one another.  Teachers, too, develop relationships amongst themselves. Working closely with other adults to develop and practice the art of teaching affords us opportunities to get to know one another on a personal level as well as a professional level. Our paths cross often as we find ways to help, encourage, and teach the children that pass through our respective doors. Personal celebrations and discords are shared equally; and we support one another as a family might.  A teacher who has been a defining part of Lincoln School is travelling a road filled...

Mastering the art of reading can be a lifelong endeavor.  Some people love to read while others prefer alternate ways to nourish their desire for a good story.  Either way, school provides students with a host of opportunities to experiment with the written word. Teaching students to read is a complex task.  By the time kids reach fourth grade they are reading and the focus shifts from “learning how to read” to “reading to learn”. Comprehension.  An all-encompassing concept designed to elicit responses to reading in a variety of ways. Students spend much time sorting out main ideas from details, analyzing inferences, delineating fact from fiction, determining cause and effect, critically thinking about author’s purpose, and figuring out how to summarize effectively, among other skills and strategies.  It’s a tall order for kids…I’ve seen all kinds over the 14 years I’ve taught, both on an individual basis and as classes. Throughout a school year ...

The workings of a classroom are many and varied; an orchestra of relationships competing for attention, striving towards goals, and developing individualism. Students not only interact with the teacher, they also interact with each other, technology, the written word, sounds, and sights.   This concert of information bombards them constantly as we learn, work, and play.  Interactions can go smoothly or travel a rocky road.  They can enrich the experience or cause trouble within.  It’s a balancing act we must teach our students to perform…finding just right balance of how to manage these relationships in order to be successful in school. Part of learning requires working together with other students on a common project.  This week, kids were placed into groups of 5-6 students and had to write a newsletter.  They each came up with their own story and then had to collaborate to get the story on the computer, designed, named, and printed. The first day of ...

The routine is settling in.  For my students that is.  For me, it has been the same basic routine for many years.  And while there are similarities between classes from one grade level to the next, it’s the specific routine pieces that help define a classroom.  These specifics are what need to be explicitly taught by me and practiced by my students. Each morning I stand outside the school doors on the little “4th Grade Wing Porch”; the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders are there waiting to be let in the building.  They wait patiently for the signal that their class is to begin the trek inside.  I hold the door for them.  As they pass me I greet them in some manner…a “good morning”, a “hello”, a “what did you have for breakfast?” or even a “wake up and smile, it’s [day of the week]”.  Sometimes I receive a verbal response, sometimes a questioning look (depending upon what I say), and sometimes I’m either not noticed or simply ignored.  Whatever the re...

     The first weeks of a school year are primarily dedicated the idea of “getting to know”.  Students get to know their teachers, classmates, classrooms, rules, expectations, and the daily routines.  Teachers get to know their students, roles in the building, new staff, and new parents.            Embedded with “getting to know” the students is the students’ academic performance that a teacher must take into consideration before diving fully into the teaching arena.  We must ascertain what our students know, their skills, strategies, learning styles and attitudes toward school & learning.  This is accomplished in many ways through short group exercises, whole group meetings, individual assessments, and simple observation.  It’s an arduous, time-consuming task that comes to fruition somewhere around the fifth week of school.                   ...

I w alk into my 14th year teaching walking into a new classroom (literally).  The past 14 years of my  teaching life have been spent on the second floor in the same room, Room 202.  I now reside on the first  floor, room 126.      Quite unexpectedly I have found a burst of novelty.  Not only for the physical space in which I teach, but  also in the teaching itself.  A fresh perspective; from the scene outside my "new" window to the way my  space is organized.  The move allowed me to rid myself of items that I no longer used or needed,  providing a cleaner, more organized look to my current classroom.  Couple this novelty with the new  school year and I find myself with an extra "spring in my step" as I cruise around the room as students  work.        Then there are the students.  New faces for me to pair with the names I've written and typed on so  many documents thu...