A little thank you from a former high school teacher...

This week, I have a new found appreciation for elementary school teachers.  THANK YOU for your attention to detail to help students get ready for their next steps in middle school and high school. When I was in the classroom, I very rarely had to explain to students how to walk in the hallway, put their names on the top of the paper, or a myriad of other information that elementary school teachers are providing on a daily basis. I have learned with elementary students, teachers have to break down information to the smallest of details in order to help them be successful in school. Your strong foundation allowed me to focus on my content!

First Impressions: Classroom Management Practices

This past week, my focus has been in the younger grade levels to provide chromebook orientations, so that students could access their accounts.  I was really impressed with the classroom management practices in all the classes.  For example, the first grade teachers had great sayings to help their students focus in a positive way.  For example, Mrs. May  would say "Tootise Roll, Lolly Pop" and then all students knowing, on cue, to say in unison, "We were talking, now we stop."  (I so wish I had a video!) Mrs. Smith in second grade also had fun quips to help her students quiet down to listen for next steps. In third grade, I found the team has a token system that works incredibly well by providing students opportunities to make their own decisions to reap the benefits or "pay" the consequences. Classroom management provides a strong foundation to everything a teacher is trying to accomplish.  Without it, learning would be fleeting.

While I was impressed with all classroom teachers, my personal heroes this week are the Kindergarten teachers! I have never taught students that were still trying to learn their letters in high school or middle school, so props to you folks.  When teaching the students about the chromebooks, part of my lesson is to work on memorizing their password; however, students need to identify letters and numbers on the keyboard to input their information. This continues to be a hard task as students are just learning what a keyboard is, but the students are like sponges and learn very quickly!

I am equally thankful for Mrs. Omps who allowed me to observe her Kindergarten class during a library lesson. See, I was NERVOUS to teach the first grade and kindergarten level, and I'm not generally a nervous person, especially when talking to a group of people.  However, I did not know what to expect! Sure, I have worked with young children one-on-one, but never a group for a direct instructional lesson. Because of observing, I created a lesson that was quite different than the students in grades 3-5, complete with a song and dance. I found the challenge to be incredibly fun and rewarding.

Connections

How does this connect with technology, you may ask? Just like we work on the foundations of "going to school" we also have to work on the foundations of their knowledge of technology and creativity. I prescribe to the Technology Determinism philosophy where I believe that technology helps drive societal decision making, and, in order to compete and collaborate in a global society, students need to be exposed to different tools and provided an authentic audience to share their work to prepare them for their next steps (whatever that may be). Over the course of this blog, I will share some interesting facts about why technology matters and highlight what we are doing in our school to prepare students.  So...stay tuned! For now, enjoy this video of second graders receiving their one-to-one chromebooks...I've probably watched it a dozen or so times!