Sunday, August 23, 2020

Breakdown

But if someone really cared, well, they'd take the time to spare
A moment to try and understand another one's despair
Remember, in this game we call life, that no one said it's fair.
                                                                                      Guns N' Roses

There is a look that most teachers know. That look a student has in their eyes when their stress or confusion or frustration becomes too high. As they near their breaking point, they search for a lifeline. Someone or something that will help them calm, breathe, understand. 
That look happened for the first time since coming back to the classroom this past week.  Students were given a challenging task - explore different parts of a rectangle and convince someone else that the pieces were either equal in area or unequal. 
As the rest of the class jumped in to the challenge, one student looked hesitant and asked for help right away. Wanting to support perseverance, I gave this student some questions to think about to help guide her into starting the task. A moment later, I saw her, looking a little more panicked, eying the rest of the class as they all were manipulating their rectangular parts. Her hand went back up and her statement of "I don't get it," came with much more of a quiver in her voice... In other words, I was losing her. Within 20 seconds this child was in tears, frustrated, and highly stressed. I was 1.5 meters away.
"Would you like a minute?" I asked, throwing a lifeline, maybe to myself. 
"No, I want to understand," was the response.
In past years, I would have been right beside her. Shoulder to shoulder, becoming her partner and working with her. The activity itself would have probably been a collaborative activity from the start, so students could generated and test theories together. I came into this moment unprepared for the breakdown. 

I ended up sitting on the floor in front of her desk with my own paper and supporting her along the way. We got through it - but, as breakdowns go, this was minor. I have had worse in my classroom before, and will have worse in my classroom in the future. The only difference is, next time I'll have a plan. 


Monday, June 1, 2020

Banning Single-Use Spaces



Conferencing spaces in my classroom (keeping me and all students 1.5m apart)

Space is one of the most valuable commodities when teaching in the time of social distancing. Even lining up to enter the school needs a line as long as a bowling lane. The value of the space you are given means you do not want to waste any of it. Chairs double as coat rooms, desks become work-spaces, organisers, and lockers.  Both the area around the sink in my classroom and the doorway double as key teaching spaces that allow me to have direct access to each one of my students. Slightly staggering the students' desks also helped to create classroom triads that have worked for small group instruction as well as collaboration between students. 
My favourite double-usage space actually resides outside of the classroom.  Each class was given a waiting-space inside the school to help control the flow of students between classrooms and playground. Ours was meant to simply be a line just outside of the classroom, but when measured out, we went well past the next classroom down the hall.  Instead, we ended up on a small bridge that connects our Elementary School and Early Child Center. Again, too long for a single straight line, we ended up with half the class on each side of the bridge. All of a sudden, almost every collaborative structure I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to use in the classroom had found its place. 
My Classroom outside my classroom (keeping all students 1.5m apart)

In the first week, we did a collaborative learning structure every time we entered or exited the building. We also used this space for brain breaks at least one other time each day (as you can imagine, 7 and 8 year olds are not used to sitting and working at a desk for long periods of time!) 
Next week I plan on tapping into probably the most underused learning space available to me...the great outdoors!

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Dangling Feet

 
First day (back) writing assignment - Capture this moment.

There was this moment that happened early on the first day back with my students. A Dorothy and Toto moment when we all realised we weren't in Kansas anymore. One student joked that she felt like she was in the fifth grade because of the way the classroom was set up. My mind flashed through images of all the flexible seating and different learning spaces that our Elementary School has worked to hard to create over the past few years. I did respond that it reminded me of my first year as a high school teacher almost twenty years earlier,  and that they all reminded me of very little high school students. Many of their feet still dangled as they sat. 
We had just come in from trying our first collaborative learning activity. I had planned a few simple prompts that they would respond to with a partner, and, while the activity didn't fall flat, it was clear that many of these students hadn't spoken to another 3-dimensional kid for quite some time. But we were here, we were happy, and we were ready to jump into this new-style school.
The first day back was to be filled with new ways to do old things that we never had to think of as we did them before. Now we needed a new way to enter the school, a new way to go up stairs, a new way to go to the bathroom, recess, and home. How bizarre it must have felt, to be a seven or eight year old, staring at your teacher standing at the front of the class with his face smiling at you from behind a welding mask. 
I wanted them to try to capture the moment. To write about the time they went back to school with half of their classmates, while the majority of the world's children were still learning from home. To write about the first building that they had been in, other than their own house, in months. The writing came in the form of letters to parents, letters to me, and newspaper articles. While most students did make note of some of the differences they saw, there was one simple theme that connected them. A theme that ran through every part of the day. Everyone was just really happy to back, including their welding-mask-wearing teacher.








Monday, May 25, 2020

T-Minus


Ready, set...

I never make snowflakes with my classes. I don't like things hanging from the ceiling. This year was the first - a bit of a gift to my co-teacher (who loves to hang things in the classroom) as a way to say thank-you for putting up with all the things that it takes to co-teach with me. 
As I entered my classroom for the first time in months, they were the first things I noticed. 25 beautiful snowflakes gently flapping in the summer breeze. Pictures of Australian animals staring at me from their wildfire posters, seemingly saying - "Remember us?". The date on the calendar still read: Monday, March 9th. My furniture had been removed from the room or stacked in corners, replaced by eleven large, individual desks spaced evenly across the classroom placed by someone with a ruler in hand and brand new rules on their mind.
For a class that has always been built with collaboration, small group instruction, and conferencing as three of its core pillars, this set up wouldn't do. 150cm between desks is the rule, yes, but so is creating our learning spaces - even in the time of Covid-19.  Time to rearrange...