When I taught kindergarten last year, I switched up the environment and the learning centers about once a month.

This was a nice change every month, but it was a lot of work moving furniture and replacing the old with the new every month. I learned some very valuable things when I was doing this. I learned that with the young grades, as much as possible, you want them facing away from the door. When they are facing the door, I find that they get way more distracted with what’s going on in the hall, or if an adult comes into the classroom, I have lost their attention. Understanding this has led me to use my classroom furniture wisely. I now try and enclose the carpet area so the children have stuff behind them and around them if possible. I leave a small bookshelf or area where I can see the door just in case I need to make eye contact with an adult in the room without disrupting my lesson. This has worked, and parents have dropped off lunches or brought a warmer jacket for their kid, without the students even turning around.

Now that I am teaching grade one and two, I had to decide how I was going to structure my classroom, and in turn, my teaching. I decided that for the first half of the year I was going to teach from the carpet, and have tables where the children could go do their work.

I really do love this approach because I find that children are way more likely to be engaged when they don’t have pencils, erasers, paper or desks in front of them to distract them while I am teaching. Heck, I remember myself, the keener, playing in my desk some days with scissors, or drawing faces on my eraser. I wanted to eliminate the possibility of unneeded distraction, and have all the children’s hands and eyes in my sight.

When my carpet lesson is over, their bodies get a break as they walk to the tables to do their work;

I find this one thing very important as that walking time is a much needed brain break for some of my students. The teaching from the carpet approach also worked well for the grade ones coming right out of Kindergarten. They would be used to carpet teaching, and definitely not be used to a desk. Having the two work areas was very successful because with the split grade I often needed one group to go work at the tables, while I did a hands on activity with the other grade. Because the furniture encloses the carpet,

the carpet students were not distracted by the quiet talking at the tables, and vice versa. To me, this sure beats having desks in rows where the teacher is trying to teach math to one grade while the other grade is expected to work independently on their work. When I was growing up, my struggle with this approach was that when I was supposed to be working independently, I was listening to the teacher teach the other grade their lesson.
On the other hand, I struggle with the notion that in half a year, I will be passing these students off to the next teacher who will most likely have desks in rows. Am I debilitating them from being able to concentrate and learn from a teacher who teaches from the front of the room while the students sit in desks for the entire day? Will my students be able to sit in a desk for the majority of the day and take in everything they are supposed to? As much as I don’t really “believe” in desks, I also know that as a teacher, my job is to teach, but also prepare my students to learn; so I have decided to switch my classroom around at Christmas and I have reversed where the carpet and the tables were. I used to have the carpet in front of the smart board, and that’s where I did all my teaching. I now have moved the tables in front of the smartboard, and come January, I am going to try to spend some of my time teaching while the students are sitting at tables facing the smartboard. I hope this prepares them a little bit more for the learning styles they will face later on, while still not giving up the way I teach best.
The poor teachers that will have my students next year are already going to hate me, because while my students are at their tables, I don’t really care if they talk. I want them collaborating, and learning how to work together while also working on their own. This has already caused some problems for specialist teachers who come into my room. Their expectation is that the children will sit quietly at their tables and do their work. This is rarely my expectation, and so there is a little bit of a disconnect there. Either way, I want to prepare my students to learn. That means that while they are in my classroom, they will be learning through collaboration, they will be taught concepts on the carpet, and they will be practicing those concepts together at the tables. I hope and pray that I am not screwing them over for the next year, and that their new way of thinking and learning will go with them as they continue on in their grade levels.

Remembrance is not just a name or picture on a plaque somewhere.

Remembrance is not a hush-hush topic.

Remembrance is not just a day off of school.

Remembrance is not just a minute of silence.

Remembrance is not reading Flanders Fields.

Remembrance is not a red poppy on your shirt that later turns into pretend lips.

Remembrance is not a word search with words like battle and valor.

Remembrance is not an hour-long ceremony with pictures, a slide show and a trumpet.

Remembrance is a person, a soldier, a team; with feelings, hopes and a family.

Remembrance is mandatory Holocaust education for students in Germany.

Remembrance is a whole day devoted to reflecting on our country’s past.

Remembrance is being so grateful, that you have no words.

Remembrance is memorizing Flanders Fields until McCrae’s descriptions of larks and guns echo deep into your soul and mind.

Remembrance is seeing the red on your poppy representing the red blood spilled in many fields and trenches.

Remembrance is hearing a veteran’s lips speak words of battle and valor.

Remembrance is being thankful to God for our freedom, our peace, and the cross.

Imagine that a parent of one of your students, stumbling around the internet, happened to land on your blog. Not your class blog with your cute photos of all your munchkins and their amazing brilliant work. Your personal teacher-reflection blog, the one where your intended audience is mostly other teachers. Pretend that parent managed to figure out exactly who you were, and that you were their child’s teacher. What would you want that parent to know? What would you say to that parent? Write the letter that you would want that parent to read.

Dear Parents,
I want you to know more then anything that I love your kids. I really do! I try to tell them I love them at least every couple weeks so that they KNOW it and inadvertently, you know it as well. That said, you may have come across my blog, my Twitter account, or my Facebook statuses, and you may have seen that I sometimes write about your children.

I do in fact talk/blog/write about your kids often! They are important to me, and they are a huge part of my day, so of course I talk about my experiences with them.
I want you to know that I try to be very careful when I am talking about your kids. I try not to use their names, and I try not to write about anything that could be hurtful, embarassing, or confidential. That said, I have made mistakes in the past, and I have said and shared things that have later come back to bite me in the butt. I have learned my lesson, and thankfully, none of these things have been online. I am trying very hard to learn where discretion needs to be used, and who I can professionally talk to when I am struggling with a situation.  I will try to explain to you how and why I talk about your kids in the different outlets I use.

Speaking/talking in person: I sometimes have good days and I sometimes have bad days at work. You may or may not be surprised to hear this, but sometimes your 5 year old makes me go crazy! When I come home, I usually share with my husband why my day was crazy. He usually laughs with me at how crazy kids can be, and how I try to handle the tornado that is Kindergarten some days. Other days, something your child says really makes me think, or it makes me sad. Sometimes it has to do with what your home is like. Don’t worry, I’m not judging you as a parent or caregiver. I am just empathizing with your 5 year olds version of what is going on in their little world.  I’m trying to make sense of it in light of my own experience. On these days, I might share your child’s story with another trusted staff member or friend; it helps me gain perspective.  Sometimes, when your child’s story has really impacted my day, I pray for you and your family, and entrust you into God’s hands because we all know my reach can only go so far.

Blogging: Parent, you may have stumbled across my personal blog and read some articles that talked about our classroom, my own teaching, or maybe even your own child. This blog post was probably written when I was unsure about something, and struggling with what I should say or do. My blog is one of the outlets I use to talk things out. I quite often ask for other people reading the post to comment and tell me what they think I should do.  Usually, I hope another teacher reads my post and leaves a comment with their advice on the situation. Sometimes people comment, and other times no one comments, and the conversation ends there. Either way, I hope you can see that the topic I wrote about was important to me; whether that topic was your child, our classroom, or my own teaching pedagogy.  Whatever it was, it mattered enough to me to take the time out of my day to write out my thoughts. I’m not the most consistent blogger, so when I do blog about something, it matters! Please don’t feel strange that I shared about your child, or my classroom issues online. It should make you feel valued. I value your child and their peers enough to write about them and try and get a response that will help your child, his/her classroom, and the way I teach your child.  I promise you, I am blogging about the situation so that I can be a reflective teacher who has the best tools in hand to educate your child.

Facebook: If you are a parent of my student, chances are that I most likely don’t have you on Facebook. If you have added me as a friend, I probably accepted because I feel like I have nothing to hide from you, and you’re probably a really cool person.  That said, I am not the type of person that goes out looking for Facebook friends usually ever, so don’t feel bad if you are not my Facebook friend. However, if you are, you have probably seen that I put “kinderquotes” up quite frequently. These are little quotes that your child and his/her peers say throughout the day. I try and write them down because I think they are hilarious, but I have no one to share them with during the day. I hope you understand that when I write these quotes on Facebook, I am not making fun of your child, or laughing at your child.  Instead, I am enjoying them at this age and sharing that joy with others who don’t get to work with the wonderful age group that I do. I get so many Facebook friends telling me that they love it when I put up kinderquotes because it brightens their day. That’s how I feel. When your child says something funny or cute, it brightens my day as well!  And don’t all of us need a little sunshine in our day?
I hope this helps you understand why I talk about your children, and how I do want what’s best for them. However, if you ever have any issues with me putting information or stories about your child online, please don’t hesitate to let me know, and I will take them off immediately. Your best wishes for your child are most important to me.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Maley

It all started when I was trying to get into the education program. I had taken a year off after I graduated high school. I lived in Germany for a year and went to a Bible school called Bodenseehof. It was a great year and I really believe it changed my life. But the U of R didn’t see my year off as the great life experience I did. When I returned from Germany, I tried to get into the university’s Education program. I wrote my little essay and included all my experience with children (which was extensive). I paid the fee and waited. I got my rejection letter later that summer and was devastated.  After talking to some people, I heard that U of R chooses mostly high school grads because they believe that these kids are the real deal. They are the ones who have always known they want to be teachers, so they apply right out of high school. I don’t know, but in my opinion not every good teacher has always known they want to be a teacher!  Sometimes it takes life experience to realize that teaching is your calling.

Either way, I took regular transferable classes that year, and when it came time to apply for education the next year, my mom had a friend whose daughter had got into education the previous year, so do you want to know what I did? I borrowed her application essay!  I figured that if they didn’t like what I wrote last year, I better go with what works! So yes, kind of ironic, but I, the future teacher, pretty much plagiarized her entrance essay into the Faculty of Education. The other girl had talked about handicapped children being included into the regular classroom, so I wrote about that too. I hadn’t even heard of the word inclusion before, and suddenly I was passionate about it. I tweaked a couple of her other ideas and put them in my own words, and sure enough, I found out later that I was accepted.  Now, I don’t know if it was all because of my essay, but it’s pretty sad that I even felt like that was something I needed to do! Please don’t judge me!

My first year in the faculty of Education, we took an Ed class that put us into a classroom to observe a teacher. I think this was a good move on the university’s part because when some of the education students got into the classroom that first year, they realized education wasn’t for them.  It’s a good weeding out process.
My second year was where we learned all the theory behind teaching. We learned about all the big wigs in education, and what their teaching philosophy was.

Dewey

My third year was my pre-internship. I was put into a Pre-K class once a week for the first semester, and then for a solid 3 week block the next semester.  It was during this year that we learned how to make a full out lesson plan; which I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used since.  This was when we really learned how to teach a group of students.

My biggest issue with my third year of university was the trip that every third year education student goes on. It’s called P.L.A.C.E. Professional Learning… something or other. The idea behind it was that all of the third year education students go to an outdoor place and learn from nature, and each other, in a different environment. That’s great with me, and it would have been a fantastic time, except the faculty only told us about this outdoor ed experience 2-3 weeks before we were supposed to go. It was a mandatory trip, and everyone was expected to make it, regardless of previous plans or work schedules. Well it turns out that I was a bridesmaid for my good friend’s wedding that weekend, @kristenlknowles. I told some professors about it, and I wasn’t really given a decent answer of what I should do. I was told that I was expected to be at P.L.A.C.E. and in fact, one professor told me that sometimes teachers need to make sacrifices! I couldn’t believe that they were expecting me to tell my friend a couple weeks before her wedding that I couldn’t be in it anymore because I was going to be camping with the university! Frustrated, I decided to drive my own car up to the lake that they were going to, and then drive home that same night.  I told my friend that I had to miss her wedding rehearsal because of P.L.A.C.E., and thankfully even though she didn’t really understand, she was gracious towards me. The next morning I took part in my friends wedding, but it was kind of a gong show, because I was the first bridesmaid to walk down the aisle, and I had no idea where to stand or what to do because I missed rehearsal! To top that all off, I found out that because I missed P.L.A.C.E. I was “red flagged” and was told that I was not allowed to miss more then 2 classes for the rest of the year regardless of the circumstance. Thank goodness I stayed healthy that year!

My fourth year was my main learning year. From September to December, we were put into a cooperating teacher’s classroom, and we slowly started teaching. We began teaching 1 class a week, then went to 3 classes a week, then we moved to teaching the whole day. I really believe my internship was where I learned what it takes to be a succesful teacher. It gave us hands on experience, and helped us to play around with our teaching and management styles. I had a fantastic cooperating teacher and we got along really well. Her and I had different teaching styles, but I think we complimented each other nicely as a team.

After December, I went back to the university for my last semester, and took the last 5 classes of my degree. One of those was ECMP 455 with @shareski, who I owe a lot, if not all, of my twitter and ”e-knowledge” to.  He was an inspiring professor who showed me how to take teaching to the next level and make it social, collaborative, and applicable to today’s students.  Now that I am officially done training to be a teacher, it’s time to move to unofficially training to be a teacher. I have been doing this online, through relationships, through everyday teaching, and through learning from everyone and everything I can!

I have bought my first iPad and I love it. I bought the ipad2 and I have started to play around with some of the apps. I am excited to use it with my Smartboard next year and see how it will make “techno-geek-learning” more portable. I take part in a Twitter chat on Monday nights called #kinderchat and these teachers and parents have inspired me with what they are doing on the iPad and in their classrooms.

They have shifted my thinking away from the traditional classroom where teachers stand at the front of the room and the kids sit in the desks. These teachers are passionate about play, but more then that, they are passionate about valuable learning experiences. Yes, they agree that the iPad is a valuable tool that can be used in early childhood classrooms, but we have been talking about how it’s just ANOTHER tool that should be used in classrooms. The iPad is unique in that it is quite interactive and the learner isn’t always passive, but I have been in too many interactive white boards will change the world conversations that have made me a realist when it comes to one type of technology changing all of education. People thought that the IWB was going to change classrooms into these engaging, collaborative environments and sometimes, all it did was reinforce the “teacher as knowledge giver” style learning.

I think the iPad will change learning in 3 ways:
1) That the Internet/ Google/ “search” will be more accessible then it has been in the past. A hard history question in the past would have to be researched, and the answer would have to be looked for. Now, the answer can be googled in 45 seconds. Does this change learning? Yes! It means that as teachers, if our questions can be answered in 2 mins by a google search, we are asking the wrong question! It means that learners are going to be face paced information retrievers who need to be taught how to validate what they are reading. It means that phones, iPads and tablets should be available and accepted so we can move past the easy questions and get to some real learning.

2) I think the iPad will make learning more collaborative. I think about how I plan on using it in my grade 1/2 classroom next year, and I plan on walking around the classroom with my iPad in hand so that I can look over my students shoulders, take pictures and tidbits of their work and display it on the screen at the front for us to build off of in real time. I think that if everyone in the class had an iPad accessible to them, apps like FaceTime could be used for collaboration and information sharing. The Disneyland trip that pulls your kid out of class for a week suddenly becomes a learning opportunity for the whole classroom. Something the kids are interested in, like rides or Disney princesses, takes on a whole new meaning, and now instead of seeing Disney characters only on lunch boxes and velcro shoes, we see it on kids online journals, it becomes writing prompts, useful information and collaborative learning.

3) Last, I think the iPad will change reading. I watched mike matas TED talk on the new digital book. It is amazing to see how reading has now become so much more interactive. You can stop reading, check out a video that corresponds to the explanation, flip forward and flip backward without losing your spot. It’s like you are using 7 little cute puppy bookmarks (the ones we all had) in one book, and it doesn’t matter if you doggy ear the page; In fact, it would be encouraged! The depth of understanding is so much greater when a book can appeal to almost all the senses! It also challenges the traditional view of literacy. Today, one would say that if you cannot pick up a book and read, you are illiterate. I would say that many “illiterate” people would be able to read a digital book, where a lot of highly literate people would not know the first thing about navigating through a digital book. How will THAT change our world’s sense of power and affluence?

That was quite the tangent. All that to say… I love my iPad. This technology has already changed me and I can’t wait to see how it’s going to affect and add to my teaching. Any thoughts? Write a comment, follow me on Twitter #mrsmaley or email me bahslerd@gmail.com I’d love to hear your thoughts.

<a

Now that we are rounding the “last corner” of the school year, I am beginning to look at things that the grade one teacher is going to need to do to help them be successful.  I want to make a list for next year’s teachers, not because they are incapable, but because fluidity and smooth transitions are so important in school.  In my list I am going to put:

Self regulation locker/area:  We have a self regulation locker in our classroom where the children go if they are feeling happy, sad, mad, anxious or tired.  It gives them a place to be alone, sort out their feelings and thoughts and take a break from the chaos that is Kindergarten.  On the front of the locker we have a sign that has a movable arrow.  This arrow is the best.  It’s a silent but powerful voice for the children to express how they are feeling.  They don’t need to shout or yell when they are mad.  They can go in there, put the arrow to mad, and everybody else knows how they are feeling, and can react accordingly.

Daily schedule: Most early childhood teachers have a daily visual schedule for their students, but I’m going to include this anyway.  It’s so vital.  The Kindergartens have security in their day, and they don’t have to bother me with asking what comes next.  They know where to look.

Centres pocket: Depending on if the next year’s grade 1 teachers gives the kids time for play or “centres,” it is so important that they give them an organized centres time.  Our centres pockets list all of the “open” centres in the room at the time.  One person is allowed to go in the centres that are on the top row, two people are allowed in the middle row centres, and 3 people are allowed in the bottom row.  The children are allowed to switch centres at any time, but this pocket gives the children a visual, and a “home base” to come back to to help them in their decision making.  It also keeps the room organized and less crazy.  If I want a centre to be able to have more then 3 people in it, I make two pockets available.  (Note the medical centre on the bottom row.  6 people are allowed to go in this centre this month.)

Daily 5: My students have grown in their ability and love for reading because of the Daily 5.  We have really worked on “read to self” this year, and the children have really developed a stamina for reading to themselves.  Quite a few of my kids are actually reading, but for the ones who aren’t, they have learned how to read the pictures or re-tell the story.  These strategies, if encouraged, will blossom into even more reading strategies next year.

“I love you’s”: I know not every teacher is comfortable telling their children they love them, or maybe not every teacher does love their students, but I can’t tell you how much this has built a relationship between myself and my students.  I try and tell my students I love them at least once every couple of weeks.  When I need to discipline a student, they know that I am doing it out of love.  I tell them I want what’s best for them.  The children have been able to talk to me and know that I am safe because they know I love them.  The biggest thing I want to pass on to next year’s teachers is not to just tell their students they love them, but to really do it.  THIS will allow them to be successful.

Can’t wait to see what grade I will be teaching next year, and to see what new students will change my life.  But first, I want to finish off strong with this year’s students.

What determines a good marriage?  How much time you spend with the other person? How many years you have been together? How well you get along?

Probably all of these things play a role in what a good marriage looks like… well… which one of these plays a role in how good of a teacher you are?  Which one of these proves you are married to your job? Perhaps how much time you spend at work?  How many years you have been teaching?  How good you are at it?

By no means do I want to consider myself one of “those” people who is married to their job, but when I look at the stats, it’s kind of frightening!

Do I love my husband? Absolutely! Do I love my job? Yes! But did this little blog post make me realize what is important to me and what SHOULD be important to me… very much so.  As teachers I think we sometimes let our JOB take over our LIFE.  I want to be a wife before I’m a teacher.  Even though I value what I do at school, I want to make sure that I value what I have at home even more.  If you are a teacher, and you are reading this right now, I encourage you to get off your computer and go show your closest friends or family that you love them more than your job.  Let me know how it goes!

I just got home from Africa tonight, and it is great to be home, although I am absolutely freezing! I kind of got my second wind right now (which isn’t surprising considering it’s 10:30 in the morning my body time) so
I thought I would write a quick post.  Africa was a really neat experience. It made me appreciate our education system here in Canada, and it made me really think and reflect on how I am teaching.  I went to a school in Nairobi Kenya while I was there, and I was able to visit three classrooms; a nursery classroom, which is like our Pre-K, class 1, which would be like our Kindergarten/grade 1, and the next grades up which would probably be a grade 2/3 split.  I “taught” a mini lesson in each classroom and it was interesting to see the culture, and how culture resonates through schools.  My student’s parents donated lots of supplies including puzzles for the school, and I decided to take a Dora one with 63 pieces to the grade 2/3 split.  It took them about an hour to finish it.  There were probably 8 students working on it.  This shocked me because I know my Kindergartens could have done it in probably close to 10 minutes.  The African children struggled with understanding the basics of how a puzzle works.  For example, that straight edged pieces would go on the sides of the puzzle, or that a picture of a flower wouldn’t fit into the spot where Dora’s head was supposed to go.  They were looking very physically at the structure of the puzzle pieces and trying to fit them together, rather than seeing the big picture as a whole.  When we finally finished the puzzle, they were so happy saying, “look at the picture! Look at the picture!” It was almost like they couldn’t see the full picture until it was finished.  I don’t know quite what to make of the situation, but it was definitely interesting.  I will write another post about the nursery and grade 1/2 class later, because right now, I’m going to bed!