Saturday, January 31, 2015

Required Reading 1/31/14

My favorite kindergarten blogger Miss Night  sends out a list of links every week and I am straight up stealing this idea.  Every week I will post my favorite articles I have read during the week.  Enjoy and let me know what you think!

This article talks why there should be NO standardized testing.

This piece spoke right to my heart, about the inequities of teaching students in poverty.

This one about pushing literacy to hard in pre-k and kindergarten is something I think about every day.

Finally this post by Teacher Tom outlines why we should all be up in arms about Common Core.

For more links like these check out my Pinterest board full of education articles.  

On a lighter note, in March my class will be learning about Holi, a hindu festival, and I am absolutely obsessed with finding great resources.  So if you know of any let me know!

Not That Kind of Charter

Here is the dirty truth.  I work for a charter school.  I always assumed I would work for an urban public school.  Yet when the offer came to work at this charter school (after student teaching and then subbing for two teachers on maternity leave) I was happy to accept the job!  Frankly being a newly minted teacher I wasn't aware of the political minefield associated with charters.  

My school was started by an organization that had a WIC clinic (Women, Infants, and Children) in a neighborhood that is poor and mostly Latino.  After many successful years as a WIC clinic they decided to expand. They started by teaching one class of Kindergartners and committed to growing slowly.  Over the past 15+ years we have grown to include an elementary, middle, and multiple high schools.  We are our state's first and only K-12 charter system. Our charter is through a local university.

I am caught between two feelings, I love and believe in public education (being a product of it myself and being lucky enough to be able to choose it for my own child)  I also know that charter schools can be just as good as public schools.

My school is not perfect, but we do a lot of things right.  We have a smaller class size than the public schools in our neighborhood, 20 students compared to 35.  We offer music, gym and library.  The one criticism that bothers me the most about charter schools is that we can hand pick students and weed out students with special needs.  Surely there are many charters that do so but we are not one of them.  The mission of our school is to serve the population that lives in our neighborhood.  We serve all sorts of kids with all sorts of needs.  I have never heard about a family being turned away, unless we didn't have a seat for them.  Our school is driven by relationships and we bend over backwards and provide a lot of support to families to make sure they can get their children to school (bus passes, gas cards, etc.).  One of our major goals is community partnerships, we are constantly making connections to provide our families with services that will help them rise out of poverty (Health care, arts programs, community fairs, etc).  Since we are a small district we are able to have a bit more freedom in how and what we teach, so we can best meet the needs of the population we serve.  Having less rules provides teachers with autonomy to do what is best for their students.

Here are some things that are not so great about my charter school, no union, lower pay than public schools, less resources than other schools, and yes it distresses me to think that money that could be going to public schools is going to mine.  It also distresses me that many charters are for profit.

Are there some (or even many) charters that give charter schools a bad name?  Absolutely!  Are there public schools that are equally awful?  Of course.  Do I favor a dismantling of the public school system in favor of charters? Absolutely NOT!  I favor honest and open discussions about what works in all schools (noting that it may be different for different populations), and trying to increase the things that work in schools so that all students can be successful!

What do you think?  Do you have strong feelings about charters or public school? What about private?  Is there room for everyone? What can we do to make sure more students are getting the opportunities they need to be successful?

Sunday, January 25, 2015

A Year Of Wonder

For the past few years I have picked a focus word to meditate on for the year in my classroom, this idea was inspired by the incredible  Sally Haughey .  This year I decided on the word wonder.  My hope is to spark more questioning with my students.  One of my unwritten goals of the year is to be more explicit in modeling my thinking by using specific language. So I have started using the word wonder more explicitly.

Although my school is pretty traditional in most ways I am given a bit of freedom about how and what I teach.  I am always looking for ways to give my students more ownership over what they are learning in K5, so the other day I had the idea of what if they chose what we learn in March.  I thought I would just ask them what they want to learn about, what could go wrong?

Here is where theory and reality collided.  I laid it out and told my students, they will get to choose what they learn in March, pulled up a blank page on the SMART Board ready to write down their answers.   Here is what they said, nothing.  Then someone offered, "I want to learn how to read." (Great, we are already working on that.) I rephrased my question and asked things like, "If you could learn about anything in the whole world, what would it be?" and "What are you curious about?"  This produced the answers, "how to do hair," "train a dog to catch a ball," and "math."  I asked a clarifying question, "great, what do you want to learn in math." "Just math" said my student.  These answers did not satisfy me, so now I am thinking on why this is.  Is it because they have never been given such freedom?  Is it because of their limited language being English Language Learners?  How can I find a way to give them more ownership over their learning?  I generally keep an keen eye on their play and use that to help me plan lessons and scaffold learning, but I really want to find an area that they are curious about and dive deep into that.

What are your experiences with promoting wonder in your classroom?  How do you get your students more control and ownership over what they learn?