Tuesday SOL: A poem about in-service days

This is a Tuesday
Slice of Life.
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day. 

Check out the Two Writing Teachers website for many more reflections on teaching.

Overwhelmed

Cold water, yes, cold water

after so many gentle days

walking,

visiting,

snacking,

napping,

loving

Cold water, yes, cold water

welcome and know

new staff,

new spaces,

new technology,

new frameworks,

new approaches

Cold water, yes, cold water

read and absorb

agenda of the day

student lists

curriculum packets

math and literacy data

accreditation process

Cold water, yes, cold water

imagine and create

new norms

restorative practices

beginning routines 

Cold water, yes, cold water

so many moving parts

interrupted thoughts

long lists of to do's,

racing time

Cold water, yes, cold water

remind yourself

you saw it coming

When you expect cold water

it is refreshing,

exhilarating,

releasing

the dust, 

the aches,

the sleep

Soak up

these in-service days

Soak up 

the new year

Soak up 

the sense of possibility.

Our first day back

This is a Tuesday Slice of Life for Two Writing Teachers. 

Check out their website for many more reflections on teaching.



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Happy New Year!
Let me share the things that made me smile on our first day back after winter break (which was yesterday) - how about 16 for 2016?

1. How much I fidgeted all night long, in anticipation, excited and nervous. Oh, how many times I looked at that clock! Why does this still happen to me after all these years of teaching?
2. Seeing the bright sun after two weeks of rain and clouds.
3. Finding uneaten chocolates in my teacher's cabinet at school.
4. My Teaching Resident sharing new pictures books she had found for the children - she was thinking like a teacher over break!
5. Big hugs and smiles from the children, happy to be back at school. 
6. Seeing families so, so, so happy to drop their children off after two weeks of togetherness - everyone with big smiles. Routine is great for all of us, no matter what our ages.
7. Watching individual kids find their friends and start playing. How excited the children were to be back together in their classroom!
8. The children laughing at my improvised "Happy New Year" song to the Happy Birthday tune, squealing "That's not how it goes!"
9. Hearing everyone's favorite memory from winter break (perhaps my favorite - one little boy said 'Mac and Cheese'. Loved it!)
10. Making a big batch of purple gak with delighted children
11. Both the Art teacher and I forgetting who was in each Art group - and me having no recall of where I kept the list. Mush for brains after two weeks away!
12. Building many block homes for toy animals
13. Children creating dress-ups from our cloth collection, making capes, dresses, head coverings, more
14. Reading Peter and the Wolf to a captive audience of preschoolers 
15. The children jumping and running in the leaves alongside the playground. 
16. Children wrestling in the leaves despite the cold!

Wrestling in the leaves

Lots of running and jumping

Happy New Year!

Tuesday SOL Up above the clouds

This is a Tuesday Slice of Life for Two Writing Teachers. 

Check out their website for many more reflections on teaching.


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The misting rain was accompanied by a thick fog. I sat on the right-hand side of the airplane, in a futile attempt to get a glimpse of the beach town where my cousins and I had played so many times when I was younger. As we ascended into the air from the runway, I was able to just barely discern the outline of a large tanker on the water, but then I couldn't see a thing other than pure grey fuzz. It continued this way for about ten minutes, grey all around. Nothing to see. Then, surprisingly, we burst into bright sunshine - we were at cruising altitude, up high above the clouds and fog. I looked down at a floor of mashed potato clouds, thinking they looked thick enough for someone to walk on. I saw no footprints, but became lost in thought thinking about Peter traipsing through the snow in The Snowy Day, finding a stick, and making a new path with it. Looking down on these thick, whipped clouds, I noticed that they thinned in the distance, like a foamy seashore, disintegrating, with all sorts of unexpected and haphazard curves, seeming to spill onto a gorgeous blue counter...deep blue sky meeting the edges of bright white clouds. Truly, gorgeous. I could not make out the land far below, though I believe it was still rainy and foggy down there.

I love cruising altitude. It reminds you that things aren't always as they seem in the immediate. It reminds you to try to fit the sour or imperfect into the big picture - to challenge yourself to see it from a new perspective. 

The preschoolers have their first day of school tomorrow. Here's my hope for the year:

May I pause at the misty, foggy moments and remember that cruising altitude awaits.

Tuesday SOL Ready or Not, Here She Comes!

This is a Tuesday Slice of Life for Two Writing Teachers. 

Check out their website for many more reflections on teaching.


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It is back to school time! I return to school next Monday for a week of professional development; the children arrive the following Monday for "Meet and Greet," and our first day of school is August 26th.

I've had three back-to-school dreams in the past week! Funny, funny, funny:

1. A field trip is planned and it is for all ages, preschool through elementary...it's early in the school year, and I don't know all the students yet...some 83 students are signed up for this field trip, and all I have is the list of their names and grades. The bus has pulled up in front of the school, and the driver is impatient to go; the cafeteria is packed with students of all ages, excited to leave. The ten chaperoning teachers are clumped together in the back corner of the cafeteria, lost in chatter with one another, oblivious to the students. The students begin streaming out of the cafeteria and onto the bus...only one teacher makes it onto the bus, when the doors close, and the bus pulls away from the curb. It turns out, I'm in charge! Panicked, I run towards the bus, holding my clipboard, crying, "WAIT!! I don't know who is on the bus!! I haven't checked off their names!! I don't know where you are going!! There are not enough teachers on the bus!! There are no chaperones!" The bus drives away.

2. "Meet and Greet" is in full motion, but I'm still setting up my classroom...it looks like a department store on a sale day, some semblance of order but items strewn here and there. Books are stacked high on all surfaces. We've had so many meetings this past week! I never got to set up my classroom! Here are the children, here are their families. It is borderline chaos. I can't introduce my new Teaching Resident, because she hasn't yet been offered the position...my principal hopes to hire her by October or November. How can I do this all by myself? I can't keep track of the new faces, parents aren't supervising their children (they seem to think I'm in charge!) and children are running from the classroom...I can't see who is coming or going because the stacks of books are so high, they block my line of vision.

3. It's the first week of school and I am so excited to meet my new preschoolers and their families, but I wonder if anyone will notice that I'm pregnant? Will I have the chance to meet with my principal and head of school to share this totally unexpected news before the families begin chattering about it? This is a nightmare, being pregnant with my fourth child at age 55! I am in good health, but, will I be up to this challenge - being on my feet with these lively preschoolers as I grow in size? I still haven't shared the news with my adult sons or my daughter-in-law...I'm sure they are going to be freaked out...as I am. How is this even going to work?

There are some serious recurrent themes here! My goodness! I woke up from each of these in a cold sweat.

After all these years of teaching, I'm still wondering -

How will I manage up the enormous and immediate responsibility of caring for these new little preschoolers? 
How quickly will I learn the names of everyone in my class? 
How quickly will we form a bond?
What will my relationship with the families be like?
What about my relationship with my new Teaching Resident?
How well will we work together?
Will I have enough time and clarity of thought to set up my room the way I want?
What "outside" burden(s) will be thrown my way, that I will have to juggle as I teach? (Definitely not pregnancy!)

Funny how the mind works when you are sound asleep.

What about drama?

The preschoolers, all at once, are freezing cold, shivering, moaning, shaking from the extraordinary snowstorm and its ferocious wind, struggling to hold onto their packages.  Their faces are grimaced and their footsteps are heavy, as they stomp through snow which is now up to their knees.

 "Whooooooo!,"  shrieks the wind, "Go back! Go back!"

"No!," they all yell bravely at the wind, "No! I'm not turning back!  I must carry this dress to the duchess!"

The Big Cats were enjoying "drama," the book Brave Irene by William Steig, brought to life through their re-enactment of its basic plot.

To the outside, untrained eye - my room is noisy, children moving every which way, clutching sheets of strangely folded paper.  However, I am, once again, amazed at the total focus of these preschoolers - how each and every child is on task, enjoying the acting, following the script.  All eyes and ears are on me and my directions, as I guide them through the story line...the first time I have ever shared this book with them.

This acute focus - it's not me.  It's the dramatic play.

Preschoolers need to live and breathe their learning, to feel it in their core.

Why not act out great stories together?


We only dramatized the first part of the story, up until the wind whips open the package that Irene is carrying and sends the beautiful dress floating up and away.  (A large electric fan sent the lightweight dancing scarves sailing through our classroom.)

The actors are working hard to pack up their dresses for the duchess.

At this exciting "intermission," I ask the children to predict what will happen next in the story and to use pastels and paint to create the image of this prediction.

*****

Here are the preschoolers' predictions about what happens next, interspersed with some samples of their beautiful artwork about Brave Irene.

"She is wet, the scarf falls out, and she is brave, and me and my Mom dug her out in the snow and we go inside and we eat."

Ferdie

"The dress goes away and monsters eat her. They make a scary face."

Saadiq

"She just goes back to her Mom and tells her 'I dropped it.' And this is her house."

Charlie

"She goes to the palace.  I don’t know about the dress!"

Ellington

"The fan blows my thing."

Nolan

"There is a rocket and a girl.  It flies with her to get the dress and it goes with the girl to the ball."

Lukas

"The wind gets Irene.  The snowstorm."

Emma

"That’s Irene.  That’s the sky and the package."

Sophie

"Irene gets to the palace.  The dress waits at a tree there for her."

Sayid

"These are hands and eyes in the snow."

Arlando

"I think a ghost comes to it."

Harper

"A picture of her Mom sick."

Bella

"There is wind and snow."

Anya

"A picture of the snow falling down on the ground and she has the empty package.  These are snow."

Ebony

"I think she is going to cry."

Jamie

"The girl is happy.  She is all the way under the snow, but she climbs under the road and sneaks into a witch’s house and fights off the witch, kicking her out and putting her in jail."

Sarah Lydia

"She is happy because she is not scared of anything."

Zoe

"The fan is blowing up up up and down.  And Irene has a new box."

Dillon

"A pretty scarf with pink and black and white and the wind takes it off.  It’s going to blow her away, too."

Jack.

"She’s making her own dress with the snow."

Reia

"The wind is blowing so hard it blows the package all the way to the palace."

Soren

*****

Several years ago, I attended a fabulous training workshop at The Lucy School with Sarah Pleydell and Victoria Brown and about the use of dramatic play in the classroom.  This lesson about Brave Irene is taken from their book, The Dramatic Difference: Drama in the Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom (2000).

Yes, we had a lot of fun "playing" with this story together.
But, what is the learning?

The Lucy School training participants collectively brainstormed just a few of the things that children learn from drama:

• it is a great pre-literacy tool; becoming good readers requires entering the story and acting lets children do that,
• drama teaches the structure of stories – beginning, middle, and end,
• it is a great way to engage active learners and, conversely, shy children,
• drama helps children learn to self – regulate, as seen by speaking in varied tones of voices, moving in unique ways, and
• it provides a fun starting point for talking and exploring subjects and exploring feelings, such as disappointment, anger, bravery, kindness.

My fabulous Teaching Resident, Laura McCarthy, noted a lot of the learning is social emotional, perhaps even encouraging empathy, because the children are actually turning into the character.

What did the children think?

 "That was awesome!" Jack exclaimed. 

 “That was really cool!” said Charlie.

Later, during choice time, Soren said he was "playing brave."  I asked him how this game is played and he said, "Well, scary things are going to come and we are not going to get scared."

Thank you, Brave Irene!  Thank you, dramatic play!

An extraordinarily beautiful idea

Somewhere in the midst of my Back to School night rap with families, I bored myself.
This year (like all years?),
I felt as if I had no time to prepare...

moving into our space just five days before the start of school,
lost/caught up in a whirlwind of unpacking boxes and preparing the room,
welcoming new students and families,
busy at home with my youngest entering his senior year of high school,
my husband away, traveling for work,
my aging parents whose care I am coordinating from afar,
a personal goal to contain my "working at home on classroom stuff" to more respectful, family-friendly levels...

all this whirlwind of life
left me insistent that I would make no big deal of this year's Back to School night, but, instead,
corral my preparations to small moments of time allotted beforehand, and
draw on my years of practice and expertise in these events.



In the midst of this, I was handed a list of
"don't forget to mention"
by my principal, and, somehow,
these small extras became the gist of my talk with families.


I had not located any of my Back to School files from yesteryear...

Where were the handouts on
how children learn best?
how to help your child transition to preschool?
the power of friends?
the value of social-emotional learning?
the value of play?
how the brain develops?


So there it was,
Back to School night,
and my agenda was basically the list of reminders from my principal.

What I had was information on:
drop off and pick up,
nutrition guidelines,
clothing guidelines,
fundraising,
our specials schedule,
the school calendar.

Ugh.

Yes, somewhere in the midst of my Back to School night rap with families, I bored myself.
And I went off script.

I had the families share about their child and themselves,
we played a get-to-know-each-other game, and
each family made an acrostic poem about their child,
which I am turning into a beautiful paper quilt on one wall of our classroom.

The evening served it's main purpose - helping families feel connected.  It was not my most polished effort ever.  However, it is a good start.  There is lots of time ahead for more sharing with one another.


Let me add some "wonder and magic" from my new colleague next door, Aisha Bhatty, a Reggio-inspired teacher -
she had each of her preschoolers paint a picture for their families.
At Back to School night,
she provided the families the same paint and materials as the preschoolers and
asked the families to recreate their child's painting.

This is such an extraordinarily beautiful idea for Back to School.

It sends the powerful message of
slowing down and observing,
being present with your child,
trying to truly "be" with your  child,
seeing and understanding how you child works, focuses, learns.

Is there a more important message for families?

And for teachers.
Slow down.
Observe.
Be present.