Librarian

Whether you are having a great day or a “down in the dump” day, the best thing to brighten any day is reading a story to 25 kindergarten and 1^st grade students.  I wasn’t necessarily having a bad day when I covered for our librarian, Tiffany, this morning, but I was certainly having a better day when I was finished with my hour.

It was a pretty straightforward assignment – read a picture book, discuss it with the children, and let them browse the books for a book checkout.  I consulted my second grade daughter before I left the house this morning and she recommended that I read “Too Many Toys” by David Shannon to the students.  It was one of her favorite books so I knew I couldn’t lose.

The story is about a boy named Spencer who has too many toys.  Dinosaurs, trains, stuffed animals, puzzles, wooden pull-toys, and noisy electronic toys clutter his room and spill out into the living room.  Finally, his parents have enough and demand that he get rid of some of the older, seldom used toys.  After much discussion and debate, Spencer agrees to put some older toys into a box destined for the dump.  In the end however, Spencer discovers perhaps the greatest toy of all time was right under his nose – the cardboard box, which he promptly converts into a spaceship.

When the story was finished, each and every student seemed to have a story about a box that they once converted into a fort, robot, or a car.  I was so happy that the students were able to connect the story to their own life experiences.  They could have told me story after story for a couple of hours, but eventually I had to cut them off so they could check out a book.

Parents should probably be thanking me soon because I think I successfully convinced the students to simply ask for a box in December for the holidays.  I think that’s what we will be getting our kids.

   

Photos: Michelle Kossivas

High School Integrative Aide

Last Friday I subbed for Amy, an integrative aide at the high school.  I walked into the high school office to check in and was promptly given a binder of notes and a geometry book about three inches thick.  I made a note to myself to look into digital textbooks again.

I met briefly with our two special educators to get my assignment and to learn what was expected of me.  My job was to assist a couple of students in geometry class and take detailed, organized notes.  I leafed through the binder and found that Amy had set the bar pretty high in that regard.

Class was just starting as I walked into Geometry, but Mary took the time to give me some direction and to get me settled in.  Students were taking a unit test in groups and my job (using the answer key) was to listen in and provide some prompting questions to keep them on track.  They hardly needed me.  I enjoyed seeing the students working together and actively reviewing the notes they had taken to complete the problems.

After the test, students worked on some classwork problems.  Mary circulated around the class the entire time assisting students (and me).  Her explanations jogged my memory and the rules and formulas of geometry started to return.

Thinking back to when I was in high school, I definitely enjoyed geometry more than algebra.  I liked working with shapes, angles, and using formulas to solve equations.  For some reason, using the Pythagorean Theorem to find the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle gave me great satisfaction.  After 25+ years, I was so pleased to discover that finding the length of a hypotenuse still gave me that math “high”.  Okay, okay…I might be exaggerating a little, but Pythagoras actually might be one of those famous people in history that I would invite to dinner if I had the chance.

2nd and 3rd Grade Teacher

I was a tad nervous about my next assignment – covering for Hannah, our 2^nd and 3^rd grade teacher the morning after Halloween.  I was expecting the students to either have a lethargic candy hangover or to still be on a sugar rush.  I arrived at 9:00 and found neither of the above.  Instead, the 3^rd grade students were working on a math warmup with Hannah and the 2^nd grade students were working on their own warmup with Taylor, the instructional assistant, in the back of the room.

Hannah slipped out the door and I took over – a seamless transition.  I started the math lesson, which involved using arrays to solve various multiplication problems.  In general, the students already had a good grasp for what multiplication meant so I just filled in the gaps.  A few students were behind in the assignment and I was immediately impressed with two students who quickly went over to lend a hand.  These two students didn’t just give them the answer, they were teaching them!

Halfway through the hour the 2^nd graders came up to the front of the room and the 3^rd graders went to work with Taylor.  We had a good lesson on estimating, packaging bundles of popsicle sticks into groups of ten and one hundred, and counting them.  These 2^nd graders…so eager to learn!

This is the 3^rd year in a row that all of our classrooms at the K-8 School have an instructional aide for part of the day.  This is no longer seen as a luxury at the K-8, it’s a necessity.  Having highly qualified instructional aides allows our multi-grade classrooms to function efficiently, especially when there is continuity, as with Hannah and Taylor.

It took a bit of an effort to clean the room and put things back in order before the students were dismissed for recess, but such is the life in an active, hands-on learning environment.  I am looking forward to my return to Hannah’s classroom when I cover for Taylor.

EL Teacher

I covered for Amanda, our English Learners (EL) teacher on Halloween.  The number of EL students in our district has increased significantly over the past few years and Amanda has needed to stay flexible in her job duties.  At the beginning of the 2015-16 school year she was a 40% EL teacher and now she is 80%.  Amanda also works as a response to intervention (RTI) teacher.  She has worked hard to learn the EL job and in turn, I have learned a lot from her about EL education.

For this period, I worked with two 6^th graders and an 8^th grader.  The lesson started off by choosing a card from a deck of thought provoking questions.  Each student answered the question around the table and then we looked at an interesting photo without a caption.  The students were asked to write a caption about the photo.  When students had a question about the spelling of a word, we added it to Amanda’s word wall.  We were all left in suspense as the real caption wouldn’t be revealed by Amanda until they met again next week.

The meat of the lesson came when we chose a current event article to read together.  The article was about giant pandas born in the United States being moved back to China for breeding.  I have to admit, it was a tough read!  We took turns reading around the table and I helped out with the pronunciation of difficult words as well as the definition of new words.

I was struck by how hard it was to explain the meaning of a high level vocabulary word.  I caught myself several times defining a word by using an equally difficult word in my definition.  I frequently stammered as I struggled to find meaningful definitions.  It was a powerful exercise for me, and it confirmed something that I already knew – that learning the English language is a complicated task!  So many words break the “rules”; it must be so challenging to learn the nuances of the language.

The students worked hard and I complimented their efforts as I dismissed them.  In all of my years in education, I had never delivered a lesson to EL students.  I gained a better appreciation for the job, the students, and the difficulty of learning this language.