March 18, 2011

We have spent this week in a school in Vancouver, WA. While there, we've had the honor and delight to work with Tessa, a first year teacher who is spending the beginning of her career with a darling, albeit rambunctious, group of kindergarten students.

We learned a lot about Tessa while there: she is smart, reflective, thoughtful, and has an ever-ready sense of humor. We also learned from her. In fact, it is what we learned from this beginning teacher that caused us to take pause and reflect on our own teaching practice.

The language Tessa uses with her busy 5 year-olds, as well as how she interacts with them, had us pulling out our journals in order to capture her exact words and actions so we might later replicate them with the children we work with. With her permission, we would like to share these observations and learning with you.

When teaching the first lesson on how to make a choice during their Daily 5 rounds, Tessa told her students, "If I checked in for you and directed you to what to do each round, you wouldn't learn how to be independent." We had never thought of articulating this to students so they would understand the intention behind choice.

A child who wanted to decrease the proximity between himself and his beloved teacher approached Tessa while she was conferring with another student. Instead of ignoring him or gesturing for him to return to where he came from, she silently acknowledged him with eye contact and a smile, finished her conference with the other student, and then shifted naturally to a conference with the child who needed her attention.

As she reflected later, we realized she was quite intentional about the choice. Though it would be contrary to building stamina and independence to allow all students to sidle alongside her during a round, she realized this student would be best served by this gifted bit of time. Once the deposit had been made into his emotional bucket, he got right back to work...and no one else in the class even noticed his faux pas.

Another piece of valuable new learning came when we observed Tessa checking in with her students at the end of the Daily 5 round. They had been trained to show how they performed on each behavior of independence by holding up one, two, three or four fingers.

Tessa reflected on how she'd done on meeting her conferring goal for the round by holding up two fingers, then made her thinking transparent so they could hear the dialogue that takes place when we are being internally reflective. She finished by stating what her plan was in order to be able to show a #3 for meeting standard, or even a #4 for exceeding standard after the next round.

It's teachers like Tessa (and there are so many of you) that make us feel so blessed to get to do what we do. As amazing as she is, we appreciate her heart for continued growth. She said during one of our conversations, "Every day I am going to learn something new and I will ask myself what I can do to get better today."

We know great things are happening in your room as well. When is the last time you observed a colleague or let your teaching partner come in to watch you work? We can just about guarantee that you'll see at least one thing that will infuse your work with new thinking, enthusiasm and energy.