Oh, November

This has been the most mentally taxing month of teaching that I have experienced yet and surprisingly enough, it has almost nothing to do with what is going on in my classroom.  If anything, I have been most struck this month by the insurmountable buildup of things that my students have going on in their lives outside of the classroom.  I knew that my students had troubles at home last year but our crew this year is really facing some tough things and coupled with this has been some investigations going on at the school dealing with faculty members. I was telling my mom over break this week that I am so thankful that all of this madness did not happen last November because I'm not sure I would have made it.

Here's a short recap of my month:
1. Several students suspended for fighting
2. One student suspended and referred to tribunal for throwing a desk at a teacher
3. News crew showing up to the school based on allegations of a faculty member
4. One student inflicting harm on himself in my classroom out of anger
5. One student expressing her desire to move from her current living situation and melting down to me talking about it
6. Another student telling me about how her home is unsafe
...plus our normal day to day

I am absolutely not listing things out for a pity party.  I have reflected on them and thought through them and talked through them.  I am mentally tired but I am not broken.  I am listing these things because this month, my biggest take away is that my students have SO MUCH going on outside of my classroom.  We talk about this all the time.  I dealt with it last year but I don't think that I fully wrapped my mind around it until recently.  I actually still do not think that I have my mind wrapped around it.  I have been struck by it again and again.  I have been thinking a lot about the control that I have in my classroom to keep my students safe and help them feel loved and how that cannot always extend from within my four walls.

We have to teach our students to be advocates for themselves.  They have to know that when they leave my classroom, I still love and care about them and will do anything to help them.  They have to know that they have the right to be heard and to be safe.  They have to know how to approach all of these things in a respectful manner.  They have to be able to stand up for themselves.  I can help them with those things within my four walls and teach them how to carry it outside of there.

November, you have been long and grueling but I am thankful for what I have learned about both my students and myself.

Projects and Students and Plans! Oh my!

As I reflect back onto the month of October, I can’t help but consider where we all were at this time last year.  Even with the things that we are facing in the day to day that are throwing us for a loop, we have to celebrate that we are leaps and bounds above where we started.  I have been grounding myself in that on the days where I am leaving work feeling exhausted or defeated.  I have come a long way with my students.  I have come a long way with my instruction.

Since last month, there have been even more changes to my life in the classroom.  I am no longer teaching reading and science but am now responsible for reading and language arts.  We have added a fourth fifth grade teacher to our team who is not teaching science.  While this was ANOTHER change that affected me greatly, this one was more welcome.  I am now able to really focus on my reading instruction and give the students the guidance that they need in the day to day to become great readers. 

As I consider my practice over the course of this month, I want to celebrate my writing class.  My students are really loving writing.  They are asking to work on their writing in the morning and any other free moment.  Some of them are taking their writing to lunch with them to work on it.  They are working so hard independently and in collaboration with one another to become great writers.  They are sharing their work readily no matter where they are and providing pointed and valuable feedback to their peers.  I am so proud as I watch them work together in writing block.  I am seeing large growth from many of my writers.  I am enjoying watching the choices that they are making in their writing and working with them to extend it.  Writing conferences are getting better with time.  We are finally getting into a good routine where they can articulate what they are working on better and talk through different parts of the writing process with me.  Conferences have been the biggest struggle but I feel like they are improving more and more as I ponder “How it’s going” with them each day.  Writing used to feel like such a burden each day that I wanted to hurry up and get through but it is so much more enjoyable for both me and my students.

I have been thinking a lot about how to take this success in writing and work its effectiveness into my TICC project.  The more I think about the project, the more I consider what I want for my students in a bigger picture.  I spend so much time and focus on the nitty gritty and day to day that I forget that there are things that I want to instill in my students that will guide them toward success in the long term. I want my students to be readers and writers – not for the purpose of passing a test, but as a way to equip them long term.  I want my students to know that they have a voice and that their voice can change their world.  This has come into culmination through my project through the term “self-advocacy” that keeps popping up for me as I have conversations with my students.  One of the ways that they can advocate for themselves is in their writing.  Written word is such a powerful means of communication and one that many of my students are lacking skills in.   I want to tie all these things together but I am still considering how to integrate all of these things together.

The other thing that has popped up this month is some of the relationships that I have with students.  I feel like that has been where most of my lows have come from in the day to day.  I have great relationships with almost all of my students but sometimes those great relationships don’t translate into the classroom.  There are a small handful of students that continually arise as behavior problems in class.  None of these students are in my homeroom and I think that many of them are not getting the attention that they want or deserve from me because I only see them for an hour a day and they are lumped in somewhere with 70 students.   In the upcoming month, I want to work on more individualized plans and relationships for a specific handful of students.  I think that this will revolutionize classroom culture and really change a lot of the issues that we have in class.  These students that I have in mind would have been DRC candidates last year and I want to carry out a similar process as I think about them, their families, their communities, and what they need from me as we move forward. 

Can you believe it's week eight?

I think that I had this notion that things would be a lot easier coming into year two. That's what everyone says, right? A lot of things are easier.  I have so much more knowledge to work with as I work with colleagues who are becoming friends. I have advice and resources to offer.  I have a sense of who I am as a teacher. I can look at my students' actions and decipher much more quickly what they need in that moment. I have more understanding of the importance of working alongside my parents and being a part of the community that my students live in.

But this year is also really new for me in a lot of ways and some days, it feels like I'm starting over again as a first year teacher.  I have been taken out of my comfort of teaching social studies - my long time educational love and my major in college - and pushed into taking on brand new content.  Not only am I learning science as I am planning out my units, I am trying to figure out what it means to teach a child to read and how to go about doing that.  As I was reflecting on the school year, I really cannot believe that eight weeks have passed already. How did that happen? I still have so much that I want to do with my students! I still have so much that I want to help them learn.

Teaching science has actually been a really fun transition. I am thankful for the exploration and inquiry that we learned about this summer in our class with Dr. Jarrett.  Reading Nurturing Inquiry, exploring the idea of play, and engaging in her science centers definitely changed the way that I thought about teaching science in a hugely beneficial way.  I have been able to watch my students come alive when they are given materials and expectations and then left to their own endeavors.  They are so curious about the world and given the tools and the freedom, they have made discoveries about plants and animals that I did not even consider when I was learning the content and making the lesson plans.  I have really been able to utilize the inquiry piece in a way that has created an exciting and engaging science class while still helping my students to learn the standard based material.  Another benefit that I have seen in this and that has aided my transition is that teaching science is a lot like teaching social studies due to its content based nature so many of my old tricks work for my students.

Some of my boys exploring plant properties using hand lenses

Xavier examines the roots of a celery plant to determine if it is a vascular or non-vascular plant

The struggle for me now is how to teach reading.  What do I look like as a reading teacher? What are the best resources for my students? How exactly does this whole "guided reading" thing work? What books are my kids going to love for book clubs? What do my fifth graders on a second grade reading level need most? How can I communicate with parents to show them ways to help their students with reading at home? How do I teach kids to read in a meaningful way that does NOT involve me just rolling through skills in common core standards? 

That was a moment in the brain of Ms. Ferguson. Nuts, right?

I don't have any of those answers yet but I am working on it.  I have figured out a lot of things that I don't want to do in my reading class over the last eight weeks. I have been seeking out resources and reading and working on the day to day execution of a balanced literacy program in my classroom. It's getting better and hopefully that will continue to be the case in coming weeks.  It WILL be the case in coming weeks.  

This week I am starting guided reading with my students.  This is going to give me a much better picture into what different students on different levels need as I move forward.  I am excited to push the critical thinking of my high students through middle school leveled texts.  I am excited to help my struggling students to gain more and more skills that will help them to decipher the words on the pages that are causing so much confusion right now.  I have no idea what this is going to look like for me, but week eight seems like a good time to get started really guiding my students to becoming better readers, not for the common core or the CRCT but for their future successes!