Max time: Check! Portfolio: err...

This past week brought the end of my max time, just as I was beginning to feel really in the swing of things. I had great days both Monday and Tuesday, pulling my unit on the five senses together and feeling very comfortable in the groove of things having to do with management.

It occurred to me I hadn't shared much at all of my unit activities, so that's what this entry will be devoted to. As I begin to work on putting my electronic portfolio together, I'm excited by the diversity of activities that made up the unit, as well as by the extensions to other pieces of the Kindergarten curriculum that emerged. Looking back, I'm very happy with the balance:

Sense of hearing:
- The children each received a plastic easter egg with different materials inside, so as to create different sounds. Their challenge was to find someone else in the group with the same sound.
- We made coffee can drums to play together and to explore patterns, an integral component of the Kindergarten math curriculum, with sounds and hand strikes.

Sense of sight:

In a large group, we read the book Look! Look! Look!, which consists of full-page photos with peek-a-boo windows on the pages preceding each of the photos. It was a great exercise in basing predictions on observations, and provided the foundation for creating our own Look! book with magazine pictures.

We also made our binoculars and went on a walk, observing the environs of our school. When we returned inside, we drew pictures of what we saw and created sentences based on the prompt "I see..."

Sense of smell:
On this day, we moved to our more conspicuous senses. We each took turns smelling four different everyday products (cinnamon, lemon juice, soap, and tea) and voted on our favorite with a graph mat: I placed each product at the head of the graph and the children came up one by one to put a card with their name on it in the squares underneath their favorite. Later, I guided them as they made their own copy of the graph and recorded their comments for display.

Sense of taste:
In combination with our sense of smell, we went on a field trip to the nearby Co-op grocery store, where some employees took us on a special tour of the various storage places, and on a scavenger hunt for locally grown products. And how could I forget: yummy apple slices and cheese awaited us at the end!
I chose to return to something we learned about at the Co-op the following week: I brought in vanilla beans and cut one open to show the children what the seeds look like inside. They had smelled the beans on our field trip and didn't like the smell at all, but they were greatly intrigued by the seeds inside and by the story I told of how the seeds are boiled in alcohol to create vanilla extract. We all tasted the extract next and realized it didn't taste much better than the beans smelled. We cupped our hands together to remember that often, plants and extracts keep flavors locked up tight until a little sugar is added and both are added to something without a whole lot of taste by itself ... and then, our hands burst open, just as the vanilla flavor bursts into the cakes and ice cream we flavor with it. To make up for tasting the vanilla extract raw, I brought in home-made "hot vanilla" (as opposed to hot chocolate), which got rave reviews. "Isn't it interesting," I questioned aloud, "that people have figured out over time how to use a plant to create a taste so different from what the plant started out as?"

Sense of touch:
We learned basic vocabulary for the things we touch - soft, bumpy, smooth, and rough - by feeling a sample mystery object from each category. Later, we used different materials to create our own books of these different textures.
The children loved the Feeling Finding game, in which they drew a card with a black shape on it and then reached inside a bag to find the 3-D version of that shape.

These brief summaries hardly do justice to the great fun we've had. For more detail, check out the link to my teaching portfolio - many of these activities are documented there, and some of them are featured in the entries necessary for VT licensure programs.

It has been a swift transition since my cooperating teacher returned to the classroom on Wednesday from full responsibility to marginal leadership. My last hurrah is tomorrow - Monday - when I will facilitate a culminating Five Senses Fair. Parents will come in and their children will guide through five sense stations. The activities featured are all things we've done together, so that the children can be the experts!

After that, I will greatly decrease my time spent at school, devoting most of my days to finalizing my portfolio. The thought of it does not exactly excite me. I mean, I am always eager to share, but, given the choice, I will always choose the kids. They are the source of my eagerness to share, after all, because they are inspirations in and of themselves. I would have no reason to share if not for my interactions with them.

That may just be the carrot I dangle in front of me: the sooner I get this done, the sooner I am ready to be back with the kids.

Max time, week two: already over?

Due to an Inservice Day for paraprofessionals on Friday, this past week was only four days. That didn't seem to make a difference to the wave of fatigue I felt Thursday afternoon.

Looking back at my comments on "staying the course" of my last entry, I realize how easy it is to reflect with some distance, and how easy it is to get all wrapped up in the same old same old once you're back. Or, perhaps, because new issues arise so often in a classroom, it's hard to sense the progress one is making in ways unconscious and gradual.

I am, indeed, staying the course as best I can, but realized a few things this week within that metaphor, if you will. First, I'm not actually "staying" with these kids. I have two more days, then my cooperating teacher is back. It will be a swift exit on my part, so that I have enough time to prepare my portfolio for presentation. I regret that, for their sake, but mostly for mine. To be honest, this whole student teaching experience sometimes makes me feel so selfish: for all of the learning I have gained, all of the effort I'll ultimately have put in to justifying myself as a teacher, it seems the only people I have anything to prove to in the end are my students themselves. What would they make of my unit plans, my reflections, my technical brou-ha-ha of video cameras and digital photos?

And then, there is the second realization, also a bit painful. Not only am I not "staying", but the "course" has proved to be, at times, not entirely genuine. Another common Catch-22 of the student teaching experience is the simultaneous desire to maintain a consistent classroom environment between oneself and the cooperating teacher and to develop one's own style of creating an atmosphere and tone for learning. Perhaps the greatest regret that washed over me in my exhaustion at the end of last week is that I wonder if I've been so concerned with filling the shoes of my cooperating teacher in her absence (and I guarantee you, they are large shoes!), that I've forgotten about the shoes I have on already that, quite frankly, I've been dying to show off a little. Storytelling, banjo, hands-on learning outdoors ... these are all extra-curricular hobbies that I was anxious to fold into traditional classroom instruction. Where did they go? I can't say I know for sure.

And yet, what about all I have learned?! What amazing tools - from management techniques to strong curricula, not to mention a deeper understanding of the development of fine motor skills, as well as of the awareness and skills of mathematical concepts and language usage. For all of the experiences I've had teaching thus far - assisting in Germany for two years and educating outdoors on Bainbridge Island for one - this experience has, ultimately, brought me the furthest. Never before had I been involved in planning long-term with one group of students, let alone be the one responsible for them. Now look at me! I know now how to turn a week at school into a logical and balanced sequence of learning and play experiences whose value will reflect back to me in the enthusiasm and work of my students.

These itches make me wonder if my growing pains are turning to restlessness. I know full well I still don't even come close to holding a candle to my cooperating teacher, but perhaps for precisely that reason, I am eager to keep teaching, to stay that course and to work at it till I've got it right --

in my own shoes.

Max time, week one: Reflections

Wow. Here I am at the end of my first full week of being THE teacher in the classroom ... and I'm still here! I was feeling on Friday that I had had "good" days and, perhaps "not as good as the others" days, but the paraprofessional assistant replied with the honest statement "Kindergarten is busy and there's a lot to do." I think she was trying to remind me that just because I feel more tired at the end of certain days doesn't necessarily mean they didn't go as well as other days. It just means I'm tired. Boy, am I ever.

All in all, I feel good about this past week. At the same time, I am aware of my goals for next week (or, you know, for my life in general). In one phrase: Stay the course.

... i.e. no wishy-washy conflict resolution. I've noticed I have a tendency to want to take a step back from conflict, as opposed to addressing it head-on, especially when the conflict is not mine. As a language learner and world traveler, one of my key learning techniques was to remain as in cognito as possible, drawing little attention to myself so that I could observe how interactions played out naturally. Now, as a Kindergarten teacher - that has to change. If I am still observing 100% of what is going on around me, I am, in turn, being observed - and checked! - by 110% of my students, who rely on me for the boundaries, advocacy, and mediation that they have not yet internalized for themselves. Sticking to my guns - as black and white as they must be at the five-year-old stage of human development - is imperative if my students are to one day regulate their behavior on their own. The moral structure (and resolve) I provide externally in the classroom is what will manifest itself and guide them internally as they continue to learn the nature and implications of their behavior.

... i.e. keep the momentum of the task at hand. Again, as a learner myself, I can become captivated by slightly unrelated material and, admittedly, distracted from what I originally set out to do. While this tact has actually introduced me to a wide range of - despite the initial distraction - very relevant learning opportunities for me, it does not serve the needs of five-year-olds, who are still distracted enough at their age by the overwhelming nature of the world they are discovering around them. For the sake of their own developing ability to focus on one task at a time, I must model extreme focus, thinking out loud and directing thoughts to a specific goal. Not to exclude, of course, the observations and comments students offer on their own part - right here is where I've not yet developed the finesse I have observed in my cooperating teacher of validating their comments while, simultaneously, moving forward in the direction of the lesson at hand. This, too, feels unnatural to me, because it feels overly structured and intentioned. However, as I mentioned above, young children seem to need and seek overly structured concepts in order to erect the initial frames of knowledge that they will continue to build onto as they learn and encounter more of life's intricacies and complexities.

Slightly tangential, but you are all a lot older than my five-year-olds, so I'm trusting you'll see the connection I'm going for:

Last spring, in the process of working on a graduate level independent project entitled Storytelling as Pedagogy, I came across the work of psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. In his book, The uses of enchantment, he makes the argument that the reason traditional fairy tales include such extreme characterizations of good and evil is that they separate the concepts of the two extremes in such a way that children recognize them first absolutely. Later in their development, as they experience the "gray" mix of good and evil in the real world, they come to conceive how good and evil co-exist in the world. However, children can only grasp the gray if they've known the black and white - they cannot discern the latter if they have only experienced the former.

And so, I am learning to return to my five-year-old sense of things:
"school is where we come to learn and do our work";
"we are all friends at school: the toys we play with belong to everyone"; and
right and wrong are, well, "that's okay" and "that's not okay".

As extreme as these statements may sound, I'm finding it a meaningful exercise for me to remind myself of these, and other, basic sentiments of living and learning in community. How easy it is to become overwhelmed by the grayness of life, to the point that it is easy to forget the black and white that create it. Kindergarten has proved to be quite the lesson in maintaining a sure internal compass in any situation - not for my sake, the individual, but for the sake of the community, living and learning together.

I think I can stay that course.

Kindergarten votes!

"My dad is voting for Barack Obama, and I'm voting for Barack Obama, too," said one of my students on Monday, very matter-of-factly. Because, after all, it is a free country. Why not let Kindergartners vote?

So we did ...

With either an "M" or an "O", my fifteen Kindergartners cast their ballots -- but not without proper introduction.

The day before we had read in small groups what we call our (Scholastic) Kindergarten magazine, which featured the voting process, complete with curtain and all. On Election Day, I brought our voting box to a big group circle to reemphasize a few things about the concept of voting:

Voting in our country is a great privilege and it's often why so many people love to live here. It means everyone gets to choose what they want for the country. Sometimes its for the president, like this year, but there are other important people to choose to make decisions for us. So, it's really important that we all vote and make our choice.

However, that choice that we make is also very private for some people. That's why there are big curtains at voting stations: so that no one will see what you choose, because it is your choice and yours alone. In the olden days, when voting was public, sometimes friends were very mean to each other because they made different choices, and said mean things like "I won't be your friend anymore", or they didn't invite them to birthday parties. Is that a nice friend thing to do? ("Noooo!") Of course not. So, people decided to keep their votes private so that everyone remembered: everyone makes their own choices. And now, it's your turn!

With that, I handed out papers and pencils, the students wrote down their letters, folded the paper, and turned them in. Then, I handed out blank white boards, markers and erasers, because it was already time to count the votes with our new shortcut: tally marks!

"One, two, three, four:

lay it across and close the door!"

Soon enough, the results were in:

I think my favorite part was the fact that - as far as I could tell - they all believed that their votes were really going to be included in the ones reported on the evening news. Who was I to contest?

Someday, they will.

"Max" time !!

I'm glad I decided to wait to write this post until the end of my first day of max time. For the next 2 1/2 weeks, I am the "teacher in charge", overseeing all activities all day long. Over the course of the past weekend, I think I traveled along the spectrum of every emotion possible in preparation for the peak of my student teaching experience. Let me think back ...


First it was like the bad dreams we have about going to school and finding out there's a test you had no idea you were going to have to take and so you haven't studied at all. I'm not sure why, but I was, at first, flooded with the feeling that I hadn't done as much of the background research I had wanted to do: reviewing my child development, extending my Responsive Classroom (R) reading, and other dorky eternal student desires. What followed was a rush of shame that I feel like I have been more worried about teaching "the right way" (as in, consistently with the style of my cooperating teacher) than about teaching genuinely within the development of my own style.

At some point, I got my act together, took out my unit plan, and started sketching out the day-to-day logistics of my first max week (Thank you, voice of my mother in the back of my head, reminding me "Take it one day at a time"). I scripted out some of the fire safety dialogue with Sparky the (puppet) fire dog for this morning's introduction to fire safety, which lightened my spirits. I wasn't, after all, going to get down on myself while practicing my puppet voices. My cooperating teacher and I went over my plans Sunday afternoon, and I remembered how much it helps me to talk through my thoughts and plans out loud. Not only did I feel more confident, I felt much more centered in what I had planned for today.

Sunday evening, sure, I'll admit it: I got the butterflies: "This is it!" I thought to myself, "Ready or not, here they come: the most honest, ruthless, and caring teachers there are in the world."

Following the emotional trip of the past 48 hours, I took it as a good sign those butterflies in my stomach were happy butterflies as I drifted off to sleep, ready to teach ... and ready to keep learning.

StoryWalk: An "active" approach to literacy

Fall is coming, fall is coming ... so goes the song we have been singing. But now, without a doubt, fall is here! We've had an unusually long and spectacular foliage season, with plenty of sunshine and the pleasant crisp air that rejuvenates you with every breath.

What better way to celebrate fall than by reading this lovely tale, Leaves, by David Ezra Stein. A young bear, in his first year of life, becomes distressed at the falling leaves of autumn. He tries to attach them back on, but to no avail. So he settles down for his winter hibernation ... only to find the green leaves welcoming him when he awakes in the spring! A lovely little tale ...

While at a literary festival in Burlington in September, I learned about an exciting recently developed project called StoryWalk (TM), which constructed and now loans out picture books as a set of stakes with backed and laminated pages. Whoever loans the book sets the stakes up along a trail of their choice - for example, the town of Bristol recently set them up along the path from the elementary school to the public library. StoryWalk (TM) was created by Anne Ferguson in partnership with the Kellogg-Hubbard Library of Montpelier, VT, and the VT Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition, and has been supported by a variety of other organizations.

Well, when I saw the example Anne had set up at the festival, I knew I wanted to try to loan a book for our school. Sure enough, Leaves was available for the last week of October, and I was fully supported by my cooperating teacher, the school nurse, and the principal. Several colleagues expressed an interest in the project, too, and one third-grade teacher volunteered to pick it up for us in Montpelier.

We received the book in five bundles of stakes, along with a starter stake, so as not to damage the stakes when putting them in the ground. I set them up on a trail that wrapped behind the school and circled the sports fields before returning to the front of the school again.


Our school sits right next to a wooded area with trails to a local neighborhood, so the setting was just perfect for Leaves. We took our Kindergarteners out the very first day, despite the threat of rain. I learned quickly that five-year-olds need to practice making a half-circle around Exhibit A in a way in which everyone can see. My cooperating teacher helped facilitate this practice: First, we situated them where they should be. After we read a page, we walked together to the next page, nobody getting ahead of me, until I called "Freeze!" I walked up to the page, then invited them to make a half-circle, guiding and helping as necessary. When they seemed to get it, we said, "Now, let's see if you can make a half-circle on your own at the next page..." Off they went! ... And they did just fine. "You need to give them explicit instruction at the beginning, practice a few times, but then you need to give them the freedom," said my cooperating teacher. Lesson learned!


All in all, it was a great alternative to our typical Storytime. The children especially enjoyed the character of the bear. Because he is "in his first year" ("What does that mean?" - "He's just a baby!"), they were greatly entertained by the bear's misunderstanding of the fallen leaves, much the way we adults are entertained by the comments children make. I could see them take a certain pride in knowing something the bear didn't, if they didn't just find it funny. Either way, I could see how the character was particularly developmentally appropriate for Kindergarteners: his ignorance boosted their sense of their own knowledge; his genuine concern endeared him to them; and the nonsensical questions he asked ("Are you okay?" he asked the leaf.) especially appealed to their sense of humor.

That afternoon, the story provided an especially nice drawing opportunity for our journal writing. It also gave me the chance to recall the storyline with them in small groups, show what the real book looked like, and learn from them what part or image of the story they remembered or liked the best. This was an especially nice opportunity just to talk with them, for the sake of my own learning about them: their perceptions, their ideas, and what they relate to most. This is the great gift of teaching that people forget to tell you about. These close encounters come in such personal little doses, like the last little box under the Christmas tree, that they are easy to miss. But they are essential to the healthy life of a teacher, like the very air we breathe, but also tend to forget in our daily thanksgivings.