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I’ve always wondered about the bird names, so I really appreciate your explanation here. I love how it wasn’t just a fun idea, but a purposeful decision to give students ownership and build community. I think it really speaks to what I’ve gathered from your and the other Prarie Creek tutor blog posts this term about how so many aspects of the schooling experience there are intentional. The fact that the school song was written by students is another example and I am really glad you shared the lyrics. It is so full of lovely imagery!
I really liked your observation about the student from El Salvador being excited to share about her background. At that age, students love talking about themselves and it sounds like Mrs. McLaughlin could take advantage of that more to create experiences in the class where students could learn from each other. This is especially true if she is doing lessons on immigration that leave it at Ellis Island rather than extending it to the present.
In the English class that I’ve spent some time in this term, I’ve noticed a similar lack of traditional “teaching” and a larger emphasis on work time and activities. I think this is an interesting facet of high school English classes that have, for the most part, moved beyond direct instruction into more discussion and writing time. In some ways, I imagine this would be harder for teachers to manage. In my English class, for example, they spent three class days working on an assignment only for over half the class to not turn it in on time. The teacher was especially frustrated because that was time she could have spent lecturing or doing more traditional teaching. I’m sure striking that balance as a teacher would be hard.
It’s really cool that you get to work directly with students enough to be able to incorporate positive reinforcement into your own practice. That is definitely something I wish I got to do more in my tutoring experience! I also really appreciated your section on modeling. I want to work on that as well, especially bringing enthusiasm into my tutoring. I do a good job at staying engaged, but I could make more of an effort to be excited and to hopefully model that school is exciting to the students in my class.
Your response made me think about the role that the teacher has to encourage kids to explore a wide variety of interests in things like the choice of free reading materials. Teachers can choose to engage in gender stereotyping or recommend books to their students without keeping those things in mind. This is especially important because many children might be in home environments where they do not get to freely explore their interests. Some parents might be more traditional and only buy reading material for their children that fit into gender stereotypes. I hope that teachers are keeping this in mind and pushing themselves to think beyond stereotypes when recommending books to students.
It makes me so sad to hear that the students might be getting grouped in ability-based reading groups. I remember reading your previous blog where you talked about that and feeling hopeful that this practice was being phased out of elementary schools. I know that as an elementary schooler, the feeling of always being in the top group played a big role in feeling like I had industry and eventually shaping my identity as a “smart kid” in school. I can easily imagine that the people in my class in the other reading groups were going through the exact same thought process and coming to the inferiority conclusion. I hope that the groups really will be based on interest, particularly since that fits in so well with Piaget’s ideas about letting students explore what they want to learn for themselves.
Clarissa, I love the story about you helping your student visualize his paragraph! I think it is especially cool that not only did you help him come to the answer he needed to complete the assignment, but you also worked with him to develop a strategy that he can hopefully employ again in the future. That really speaks to Vygotsky’s idea of what the child can do with assistance today they can do alone tomorrow. Whether he uses that specific strategy or just carries forward the idea that he should pause and collect his thoughts before he jumps right into his work, he will be a better writer because of it.
Your post made me reflect on the way Piaget’s stages would affect response to the pandemic. It’s super interesting how children who can’t comprehend the scale or impact of the virus would be the most willing to cooperate on measures like mask-wearing because they aren’t yet coming to their own conclusions. If there is a trusted adult authority figure in their teacher encouraging them to properly wear a mask, they will do it. As children get older, they might experience dissonance if their parents and teachers are giving them conflicting messages around mask-wearing, but as Kindergartners, they do not even fully understand why they are wearing them, let alone whether they should be.
