Step 23: "The Takeover"

I vividly remember a phone conversation I had just about this time last year with a then TEP student who told me that she was about to begin her 2 week instructional "takeover" of her student teaching placement. Frankly, I was in awe. The idea of fully planning for and teaching a class for two whole weeks sounded like a mammoth task that I could not imagine taking on.

Well, I'm here tonight to tell you that my 2 weeks are done! Actually, I finished my "takeover" last week before spring break ... and to be perfectly honest, I have just needed a bit of time to process the experience before writing about it.

Initially, I have to admit, the first week of my “takeover” felt pretty anticlimactic. Now, with some distance, I believe I felt this way for a couple of reasons: 1) I did gradually build up my responsibilities in the classroom, so when the "takeover" began I was not doing anything that I had never done before that week - I just did more of each thing; but also because 2) the reality of a “takeover” is not exactly as I once feared it might be. Teaching “full-time” does not exactly mean taking on the daunting responsibility of completely filling every minute of the school day for 10 days; instead, I have learned how teachers build off of existing curricular materials, facilitate independent learning time, and make other skillful, but less active plans that do not require the teacher to be “on the spot” all the time. Furthermore, we were far from alone in preparing what and how to teach during that time. For one thing, we all had material that we needed to cover based on the school’s curriculum scope and sequence. In my case, for example, I began my 2 weeks right at the beginning of the students’ unit on fractions, so naturally I led them through the math book’s lessons much like my classroom mentor would have had she been teaching them during that unit. We also had a great deal of input and support from our seminar instructors, who oversaw the development of our “Integrated Unit”, which acts as our Term IV project (see previous posts for information on Term I, II, and III projects). This unit is meant to give us experience with longer-term planning, and teaching interdisciplinary units in a full class setting. You can explore mine here, by navigating to the Term IV page. As you can see, we have come a long way from planning single subject, small group lessons and yet I really can say that we have built up to this in small enough steps that this task that originally seemed like a mountain became a really surmountable climb!

The opportunity to really be in the teacher role consistently for two weeks straight gave me a great chance to reflect on where I am now, what I’m proud of, and what I still need to work on. A few of my current takeaways include:

·       I have definitely become more comfortable overall standing up in front of the class for a lesson. I have been noticing that I approach each lesson less like a “performance” and more just as a part of my ongoing interactions with my students. I think that this shift has helped me to be more aware of students’ reactions, because I am not just delivering material to them, and to remain more flexible.

·       Speaking of behavior management, think that I am becoming increasingly comfortable with moments of discipline and had a few instances this week when I was particularly happy with the way that I was able to react not out of anger or snap judgment, but instead with firmness but also inquiry into root causes and larger meanings of student misbehavior. That said, one thing that I need to continue working on is establishing and following up on consequences, for while I am comfortable having corrective conversations with students, I don’t really know what to do as the “next step” when I begin to have the same conversations over and over again.

·       Finally, I have definitely noticed a difference in the way I am able to react to small and large “bumps” in my lessons and school days overall. I remember that as recently as in the fall, when I scrambled a set of directions, or had a challenging conversation with a student, I left school feeling the huge weight of my mistake. While I definitely believe I need to take responsibility for my mistakes, I also think that it represents progress for me to now be able shrug off small things such that I can focus on bigger issues.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me - and please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments you might have if you are thinking about joining next year's TEP cohort! My email is RSarnoff@gse.upenn.edu.

Step 22: The "perfect storm"

 Monday, 3/14

  Losing 1 hour of the weekend
  Darker morning wake up
  Dreary rain
  Cold season
+Monday
________________________
"The perfect storm"


Truly it is not usually any great stretch to "stay positive" in my reflections on this blog. I can honestly and enthusiastically say that I am enjoying my time in the classroom, experiencing real growth as a teacher, and loving the city of Philadelphia. And yet Mondays can be very hard! (And, let's be real, so can Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, or even Fridays...) This term, student teaching really is a full-time job; and along with the fantastic highs of this role, also come daily trials. Today's efforts to get students' heads up off of their desks and their brains focused on math in the late afternoon were particularly tiresome when I, myself, also would have loved a break! In these tough days, my relationships with my Classroom Mentor, Penn Mentor, and friends in my cohort are invaluable. It was actually my fantastic Penn Mentor (a retired teacher who visits me weekly to observe, provide advice, and overall act as my fairy godmother of the program) who pointed out how dramatically the cards were stacked against us yesterday - and yet she provided great solace in my day, both by helping me to strategize ways to engage my students, and also just by lending a caring and compassionate ear to my trials of the day. Similarly, it was comforting to check in with my classmates today and hear that I was not at all alone in feeling "off" yesterday. In fact, I cannot emphasize enough how important sharing the experiences of this whole year with my classmates has been. From quick texts to long library study sessions, they are always there to get me through the tough days and projects, and I couldn't dream of doing it without them!

Step 21: Teacher Networks

I am continually impressed by the number of teacher networks organized in Philadelphia. It is truly inspiring to see how a large community of teachers comes together for funding opportunities, professional development, and even just emotional support. Within the past month, I attended two events, hosted by different groups, but not at all in competition with each other. The first was the PhilaSoup Winter Brunch, where three local teachers presented on projects that they hoped to do with their students, and based on the votes of the attendees, the organizers distributed grant money to enable them! At the event, we also learned about other grant opportunities available to teachers, chatted with teachers from other schools, ate great food, and even got to take home a ream of paper (invaluable to teachers)!

Just this past week I had the cathartic experience of attending a meeting of the Action Research Group. This group, which meets at Penn but is not affiliated with any particular school, serves as a "third space" for teachers to come together to discuss research they are pursuing within their own classrooms. I was drawn to their meeting particularly after a presentation some members did at the Ethnography Forum a few weeks ago that really helped me to understand what teacher research can look like, and how valuable it can be to a classroom (more on this is an upcoming post). The meeting, however, really satisfied not only the researcher side of me, but perhaps even more so the overwhelmed grad student and prospective teacher side because it helped me focus on the "light at the end of the tunnel" so to speak. Many of the current members of the group are TEP graduates from recent years, and seeing them now as teachers, employed, and (despite daily challenges) really loving their jobs, was reinvigorating. They reminded me that each assignment I am doing this term is in service of becoming a better teacher, and that I should focus on doing these things to benefit me, not for the grade etc. This came at an important time, as I turn my attention to my final portfolio assignment. I hope to be able to use this assignment not only to sum up my work from the year for external audiences, but to give myself an opportunity to reflect on all that I have done this year!

Step 20: Advice from professionals

Tonight a panel of generous local principals visited our seminar class to speak about the qualities that they look for when hiring teachers, the things we should consider when seeking a school to work in, as well as other advice for new teachers. Although every conversation that revolves around the job search makes my stomach flip and turn with nerves, I also was encouraged and inspired by their words of advice. As all conversations around being a first year teacher go, this one largely centered around how hard the job is. Much of their advice was about the importance of self-care: "Pay attention to your triggers. Learn to recognize and moderate your responses to them," and "find some time for yourself" they encouraged us. "Be vocal about the support you need, reach out and don't wait until things pile up and you feel like you are drowning." Along with this "real talk," however, they also reminded me why the job is worth the struggle. "You must not forget how powerful you are...you shape children's lives," one said. These are the types of conversations that I hope to check back in with as I begin this challenging career and particularly the rocky first year (or more). I feel lucky to have mentors and classmates to turn to already for support and motivation in tough times, as well as inspiration and celebration in the good moments, too!

Step 19: Understanding misunderstandings

This month, my third grade students are exploring multiplication and division, and, in the midst of memorizing their basic facts, we are also working on the order of operations. Today, while reviewing parentheses, I noticed several students stuck on the following question: 

29-(10x2) = ?

Of course, you might realize that these parentheses are unnecessary given the order of operations, however they do not yet know this, and, until the introduction of parentheses, they simply approached equations left to right. They are coming to understand now, however, that parentheses mean that you do that operation first, so most looked at this question and found the 20; however, many then got stuck. "Ms. Rachel," they said, "this isn't possible! We can't do 20-29 that doesn't work" (they don't know anything about negatives yet). I was confused why so many of them were switching these numbers, something I had never seen them struggle with in subtraction previously. But then one student explained to me, "the number from the parentheses comes first," and I got it; we had told them that what happened in the parentheses came first, and they extended that beyond the initial operation to reverse the rest of the problem. 

I bring up this moment, because it really stood out to me as an example of a misconception that makes COMPLETE sense, but does not even occur to those of us who already understand a concept. Until my student talked me through it, I had no idea why they were switching things around, and therefore did not know what part of the procedure to re-teach. I believe that the accumulation of moments like these will make me a better teacher, such that I can guard against them (or at least know what to look for) in the future. It is so impressive to me when my Classroom Mentor can anticipate these challenges that students often have, and address them before they get confused or frustrated and I am grateful for a year of student teaching to begin to build up these experiences such that I, too, can begin to do this for my students. 

Step 18: Lesson planning

Looking at school calendars, it's easy to assume that teachers (like students) have a remarkable number of days off. On this eve of President's Day, however, let me tell you - tomorrow will be no vacation day. Instead, I plan to spend it lesson planning. Currently I am working on both immediate lessons that I will teach this week (two days of math, a literature circle, and possibly a day of social studies), but also looking ahead to my unit plan for what is called our "two week takeover". During that time, we are expected to not only fully lead the class for two weeks, but also to teach a unit of our own design (more on this in another post). Whether adjusting a lesson that my mentor teacher has previously created, or coming up with them on my own, I am beginning to get into a more natural habit of focusing on objectives, assessment, and then activities. This "backward planning" is proving to be valuable in ways I did not initially imagine. In particular, this style of planning has really helped me to focus on the main goal of my lesson such that, when (inevitably) things do not go exactly according to my plan in class and time flies by too quickly, or I get off track temporarily, I can double back to the objective to make sure that at least that came across clearly. For example, I recently led a math lesson on quadrangles during which I easily could have gotten lost in the weeds discussing the vocabulary of each multi-sided figure. However, I had already established, with the help of my CM, that the most important takeaway for the students was that these shapes can appear in many different forms, but that they can be identified by the number of sides and angles that they have and named by their points. During the lesson, we had some fun playing with shapes and their names (rhombus, parallelogram, etc.), but I made sure to bring it back to these main takeaways such that the vocabulary was not the focus.

Another goal of this style of lesson planning is to avoid what I believe is a stereotypically elementary lesson style of "activity-based" learning. That is, "today we cut out snowflakes, because it's winter...oh and maybe they were also practicing symmetry." This is not to say that students shouldn't get to do fun activities to supplement their learning; however, it is essential that the objective drives the activity, not vice versa. I think I'm becoming better at this process, but gosh it sure takes a lot of time! I can't imagine what it is going to be like to plan for an entire year!

Step 17: Roses, thorns, and buds

Although I have only been training as an elementary school teacher for a short amount of time, I have long been a fan of many of the group games and activities that many associate with the profession. Among my favorites, are "warm fuzzies" (yes, you really can spend time just saying nice things about people), and "roses, thorns, and buds." The latter is a version of "highs and lows" that I think positively provides space to reflect, but also to look forward to what is still to come. At the beginning of this week of student teaching and classes, I'm going to spend some time sharing with you the rose (highlight), thorn (low point), and bud (something I am looking forward to) on my mind.

Rose: I LOVE reading aloud to my kids. I think sharing a story is simultaneously a knowledge-building and community-building activity as well as just calming and fun for everyone. I plan to build a chapter book read-aloud into my classroom's schedule regularly, and I particularly like the idea of it as a way to re-group after lunch recess. In my current class, we do read-aloud once or twice a week, including before lunch on Mondays and my Classroom Mentor has been incredibly generous in handing this over to me! The 30 minutes that I get to spend with the book and the kids is frequently a highlight for me, and today was no different! My students today got particularly excited about making predictions about the story and the direction it was heading.

Thorn: I made a mistake today, and worst of all, rather than just making me look stupid (acceptable, sometimes),  it actually made one of my students feel incompetent (NEVER acceptable). What happened was, I planned a number talk for my third graders that began with two, multi-digit addition problems as we have been doing for the past few number talks. The students have been really impressing me with the strategies they share as well as the way that they listen to and build off of their classmates' strategies, and I thought that it might be time to throw in a subtraction problem. I did this, however, without floating the idea by my Classroom Mentor (the "real" teacher in the room), who knows the kids' grasp of subtraction much better than I do. The question did not completely flop - in fact, several students articulated great strategies for solving a subtraction question in their heads; however, I found myself unprepared for clarifying a complete misunderstanding of one student. As I tried, and sought other students' support in helping her out, the whole thing stretched far too long. In the end I needed to wrap it up without this student "getting it". I tried to avoid leaving her with a feeling of hopelessness by saying that we would work more on it and that she would share her solution next time; however I hate that she had to feel under the spotlight for being "wrong", and that the whole lesson dragged on so long that the other students, who were previously engaged, completely lost interest. I believe this flop today demonstrates to me the need to not only plan thoughtfully and carefully, but also to manage time well, too.

Bud: My school has Friday, as well as Monday, off for their "mid-winter break" this weekend, so this Thursday will be our class' Valentines Day celebration. Not only does this mean that I get to try my hand at a pink and red recipe, or two, but best of all IT'S PAJAMA DAY!!!!! I have not had one of these for years, and am so excited I even ordered myself a new pair of PJ's for the occasion! From group bonding games to snacks, crafts, and celebrations, I LOVE elementary school and keep finding many reasons that confirm my choice to pursue this career!