ELLEN
BERG
Final Diary
#33
What We Learned Together
"I
don't want to quit teaching until I get it right."
–Comment by a colleague overheard
at her retirement happy hour Friday
Fortunately
for you, my editor, and me, the idea has come. Rather than the big understandings
of years before, I realized that the common thread lay in the discovery
of small things, otherwise known as The Devil Is in the Details. I take
it as a sign that I am maturing as a teacher.
Micro-teaching
When we first begin teaching there are so many big things to learn and master at once: paperwork, workload, classroom management, school and district procedure, curriculum, lesson planning, and on and on. There is no time to spend figuring out how to manage Johnny or Shakira, to differentiate instruction for the kid who writes at a snail's pace, or to fine-tune lesson plans. All effort and energy is focused on developing, mastering, and maintaining the big picture. This year I was able to zoom in on multiple areas of my practice to hone my craft. Trends and situations I had never noticed before arrived on the scene to puzzle and frustrate me. My teaching is moving from the macro to the micro. In my background entry this year I listed several goals for the school year. As I reviewed them, I was surprised to see how closely I followed them in comparison to prior years. While I did not meet them 100 percent, I am pretty pleased. Implement Reader's Workshop: While I did not fully implement reader's workshop, I did begin embedding many of the strategies into my everyday practice. Every day without fail I read aloud to my students. We used those readings to learn more about reading and writing, and on the survey my students took at the end of the year many of them listed read aloud as their favorite activity. I also taught reading strategies explicitly and modeled the strategies with my own reading. Furthermore, my teammates and I kept to a daily Sustained Silent Reading routine in the afternoons that had students reading 50 minutes daily by the fourth quarter. We are looking to reevaluate the SSR program to include more conferencing and celebrations of reading since many students continued to react poorly. While the SSR period did not go as well as we would have liked, our commitment was cemented to the process itself, and we are looking at ways to improve the program as a team. Finally, I used reading and writing conferences with students regularly. I think I really grew as a questioner and facilitator this year. In the past I was always ready with an opinion or suggestion, but this year I focused on asking kids questions to help them decide what the best route was for their writing. Help Students Enjoy Their Learning: After reviewing the answers to the question, "What would you change about Mrs. Berg's classroom?" on the survey, I was pleased to see the majority of students listed, "Nothing," as their answer. During the survey, kids excitedly rehashed the projects and activities we had done of the school year, many times asking if they could list more than one favorite project. In his essay in response to the question, "How does poetry help express who you are?", Keith wrote, "When Mrs. Berg first told us we were going to do poetry, I was upset. I thought poetry was boring. Mrs. Berg taught us poetry can be fun. I found out I can say what I think and express myself." While I still had occasional groans (from which I took my cue if there were too many of them), overall it seemed as if my students were more interested and engaged in their learning this year. Differentiate Instruction: I learned a lot about my students' strengths and weaknesses this year and used that data in my planning and decision making. I modified assignments, extended deadlines, provided alternate ways to satisfy the requirements of the class, and even figured out that one student needed to go to another room away from his peers to work on assignments so he could focus. I am very pleased with the results. As I discussed in an earlier entry, most of my below-level students made huge gains on the Scholastic Reading Inventory. I had hoped I would see an improvement that matched the improvement I was witnessing in the classroom, so it was very gratifying to get the test results. Alas, I realized too late that differentiation applies to all students, not just the struggling ones. Where my struggling students made huge gains, my above- level students stagnated or lost ground. I will not make that mistake again next year. Give More Responsibility to Students: I am a control freak, so this was a difficult task. I started by allowing some homeroom students take over simple classroom tasks. One student took care of changing the date on the board daily and posting the agenda. Another student passed out computer disks. Jasmine took care of passing out the flyers I used to forget. I realized how much I appreciated these simple acts, and it spurred me to do more. I began posting assignments on nicenet.org and referring students to the website if they lost their copies or were absent. If a student was having a difficult time understanding what I was explaining, I asked for volunteers to assist that student. I pushed kids to find the answers for themselves instead of relying on me. I still have progress to make, but we are moving in the right direction. Technology Integration: A goal I did not list at the beginning of the year but which barged in was integrating technology. We finally received our computers in January, and I cannot imagine teaching without them. I promised myself I would not waste this precious gift by using them infrequently or as expensive word processors. I spent a lot of time finding online resources and projects that fit my curriculum, and technology became yet another tool to help my students learn. As I told a friend of mine recently, having computers in the classroom does not make the classroom a constructivist classroom, but they do make teaching in a constructivist manner a lot easier because of the wealth of resources and product choices available. As always I feel a little sad and reluctant to let my students go. We have spent ten months together, learning, discovering and growing. While it is time for them to move on, I want to hold on to them for just a little longer. No matter what I want, however, Monday at 2:55 they will be out the door and on to seventh grade before I can say everything I want to say to them. And so, for my students who know I keep this diary and occasionally peek, I want to offer this one thought: I learned from you too.
