2002-03
BACKGROUND
ELLEN
BERG
Sixth Grade Language Arts
Turner Middle School, St. Louis MO
This
year's journal-keepers include one returnee -- sixth-year teacher Ellen
Berg, whose current specialties are English and communication arts (but
she has taught shop and pre-calculus!). This is Ellen's third year as
a MiddleWeb diarist.
It is difficult to believe, but I am now entering my seventh season. My very first students are off to college and their adult lives. Somehow, between then and now, I have made the journey from a fresh faced newcomer to an experienced teacher, complete with my first little gray hairs. When I think about how much I and my school have changed in just a short seven years, it feels more like a century.
I am still teaching sixth grade language arts at Turner M.E.G.A. Magnet Middle School in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, and I am also the language arts department chair. We are in the fourth year of our computer animation and technology magnet focus.
This year the science teacher on my team and I have each been selected to receive 13 student computers, special desks that give students plenty of individual work space with the shared computer in between, a teacher computer, a teacher laptop, two printers, a scanner, a SmartBoard, a digital camera, and 100 hours of training. The computers in both rooms will be networked and will have Internet access. Just when I feel like I have everything under control, a new stimulus enters the picture and I find myself again the student.
About Turner
Turner Middle is located in north St. Louis in a racially isolated area. Roughly 85-90% of our students are African-American. The rest are Bosnian, Caucasian, Hispanic, and Asian. Despite our attempts to become more racially diverse (our magnet initiative, for example), we seem to have lost some ground in that area. Additionally, 90-95% of our students receive free or reduced lunch. The majority of my kids have personal profiles like the test subjects for research about at-risk populations: poor, single-parent homes, minority, below reading level, living in high-crime areas. For the first time since we became a magnet school, we have a stable team. Everyone I worked with last year has remained at Turner. We spent many weeks before school started reflecting on what did and did not work, and we made many changes for the school year. For the first time since I began teaching, I am a part of a real team. A new class we lobbied for called Academic Lab has set the stage for us to collaborate on skills and concepts that transcend content areas. Each day we have 80 minutes with our advisories to work on whatever we choose. On the docket are Sustained Silent Reading, organizing binders and lockers, learning how to open combination locks, note taking, content area reading strategies, and writing our team constitution. We plan the activities together, delegate tasks, and share materials.Additionally,
the science teacher and I are collaborating on an action research project
to determine whether daily read alouds, a content-area reading center
and writing in response to their reading in science will deepen students'
understandings of science concepts. We are going to pilot the program
with a small group of students at first as she learns more about reader's
workshop. We expect to expand it team-wide if the results are what we
anticipate.
We have also returned to an 80-minute block schedule. On Mondays we see
all four of our classes for 60 minutes, but the rest of the week is on
the block. The eighth grade team is unhappy about the switch and have
done nothing but looked for reasons why we cannot use this schedule. Fortunately
our principal has stuck with the schedule because the district expects
us to be on the block, and one of the few negative comments we got on
our evaluation from an outside team was that we were not blocking. Hopefully
someone will work with the eighth grade team to help them use the time
effectively.
My plans for my classroom
This year I want to fully implement reader's workshop because the bits and pieces I have tried have been the most effective strategies I have used to date. Originally I intended to try writer's workshop as well, but after much thought, I decided that might be overly ambitious. Better to do one workshop extremely well rather than both workshops poorly. I will, however, be trying out a few strategies from writer's workshop so I will be ready to use it the following school year. [Note: Ellen participates in our reader/writer workshop listserv.]
I am also determined to help my students enjoy their learning and my classroom. I have finally realized that while learning requires hard work, it does not require students to be bored. I am trying to take the learning to my students' lives, allowing them to learn in their worlds, not mine. We are going to work hard, but we are going to celebrate and laugh and enjoy our time together. I want my classroom to be more like an ABBA song; lighthearted and fun. I want to differentiate instruction more effectively so that the strengths of each of my students are put to work. This summer I had one of the most wonderful young men in my classroom. He created amazing three dimensional scenes out of nothing but a little glue and construction paper. Though he receives resource assistance and is below reading level, he has this amazing talent. I want him to be proud of his talent and know he has something to contribute, and I am going to figure out how to help him show what he knows. Each student has something I can use to help them navigate the sometimes scary oceans of reading and writing. I only have to find it. I am determined to release ever more responsibility to my students. They are too dependent on me to direct every little move they make. I want them to learn how to be more self-confident, to know where to find the answers they seek. I also want them to look to their peers as valuable resources. I believe if they begin to use each other for help, there will be fewer conflicts as they come to appreciate what Johnny or Jimmy or Sue can do. Finally, I am pushing myself to zoom in on all aspects of my practice. I have long been a whole-picture person, and while that particular house is in order, it is time to fine-tune those troubling little details. For example, while I have long used pre-assessments to give me a picture of my students as a group, I have not been as effective at using an individual student's results to drive his or her program. It is time to move in a little closer and reach everyone, not just the middle of the pack. So, I am back. I feel renewed and more excited than I have been in years. The potential for great learning on the part of both the teacher and the students is tremendous. Can't you feel the buzz?
