"Flexible Seating" Classroom

When I arrived in my high school English classroom in August 2014, I left much of it as I found it. As I've written about before, I was nervous, low on confidence, and trying to do things "the right way," so I left the desks in the forward-facing rows as they had been.

I left my desk alone, too, sectioned off at the side of the room, a little bubble for adults only.

That worked fine for a year. I hardly even thought about it. I had so many other things going on. Occasionally I had the students rearrange their desks in small groups for activities or fish bowl discussions, and a few times we moved them to the side of the room completely to have the entire floor plan at our disposal, but we always moved the desks back into rows before the bell rang.

In August 2015, I stepped into a coworker's room and saw her rearranging her desks in a semi-circle and remembered that I had other options. Yes. Yes, this was what I wanted. I went back to my room and did the same. (The lone desk to the side is for the para I had in my room a couple hours of the day. Oh, and for the record, yes, the light at the far side of the room DID work, the students just decided that it made the room too bright to have both on.)

But the students hated it, especially the juniors and seniors. Accustomed to the status quo, they became nervous at the prospect of all being on the same level, not being able to feel like they're more prominent than the others or hide behind anyone. So I moved back to the rows temporarily (I noted that the other teacher did, as well, only keeping the semi-circle arrangement for a small seminar class) and started thinking about my next move--a deskless classroom.

I did a bit of research on going deskless (links below) and decided that it was too big of a jump to make immediately. Instead, I opted for what I called a "flexible seating" arrangement at the start of the second semester. I was thinking about surprising the students with it, but then I realized that that wasn't helpful behavior on my part.

Instead, I discussed with each class how they felt they learned best and then relayed my plans to them. I let them know that if they felt like they learned best while sitting in a desk, that would still be an option. However, if they felt more comfortable laying on the floor to work, that would also be an option. We discussed what acceptable behavior in the classroom was and how it would be handled if behavior wasn't acceptable. I particularly enjoyed this conversation because it felt authentic, and we revisited it a few times throughout the rest of the year. The students could tell that the flexible seating arrangement was something I enjoyed being able to provide, but that I was nervous about being told off by administration. They reminded each other that, "If another teacher walks in right now, they're gonna think you're sleeping if you're laying like that. They're gonna tell the principal, and he'll make us bring the desks back. So you gotta sit up and look like you're working!"

The day before Winter Break, I had the janitors help me move all the desks but five to storage. My husband and I just so happened to be buying new furniture around this time, so I brought in all the cushions from the old ones. (I considered bringing the couches themselves, but had no good way of transporting them the hour's commute.) There were also five plastic chairs that belonged at the back computer table (which no one ever used. I considered repurposing that table, as well, but never got around to it) in which to sit, but mostly they wound up serving as places to put things.

And the students thoroughly enjoyed it. They spent a couple of days exploring different seats but then settled into their claimed spaces for the rest of the year, as human nature is wont to dictate. Some students still felt more comfortable at familiar desks, and during junior and senior English, all desks were filled every day. Another favorite was under the computer table because even older students like to hide like preschool students do! (The room was such that they were still completely visible while under the table.)

Thus, here is how the room looked between classes (cushions were stacked by the back wall at the end of the day so that the room could be vacuumed):

And a couple of action shots! The timer indicates that these pictures were taken during daily writing time:

The biggest change for me, personally, came one morning when, completely frustrated by something or other, I realized that I was "hiding behind my desk" and "needed to be out on the floor with the students." I had a couple of students help me pick the teacher desk up, turn it around, and shove it against the wall (so that the drawers could still be accessed). I disconnected the desktop computer, connected it to the SmartBoard (quite tricky since all of the wires needed to stretch to where they were going now), and instead, used the laptop as my primary computer because it was able to roam the room with me. The "teacher chair" became available for anyone to use, much to the joy of my freshmen.

Here's a couple of action shots during homeroom from those times:

On the note of the "teacher chair" (which was gone from the above pictures. Maybe I was sitting in it that day?), I was actually surprised that there wasn't any fighting over it, which was unexpected because there was only one. The students must have recognized instinctively that if it became an issue, it would be the first thing to go. Thus, I never had any problems with it. The one, small thing that DID come up was that while a freshman was rolling around in it, he had to be reminded to watch where the wheels of the chair were so that he didn't crush anyone's fingers in the process. He did, after that, and no one was hurt.

So! Takeaways? Hmm..

This is definitely achievable and definitely leads to a more relaxed atmosphere that increases student engagement. For the record, the administration was always open to allowing me to try. Most of my pushback came from other teachers, some of whom actually walked into my classroom and scolded me for it, telling me to change it back. I replied that I had consent from administration and smiled politely until they left. The para and some of the students told me at the end of the year how surprised they were that we had so much success with it. I'm glad they considered it a success, but even more so, I'm glad that we experimented with something new.

Further Reading:
MindShift - To Foster Productivity and Creativity in the Classroom, Ditch the Desks!
EdTech Magazine - Is It Time to Get Rid of Desks in the Classroom?
Daily Press - Classroom with no desks a hit in Newport News
Tim Bedley - My Unusual Elementary Classroom
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Journal Sentinel - Some schools giving desks the boot
Indonesian Teacher Reflections - My Deskless Classroom...
Grant Boulanger - Reflections on teaching without desks
Utah's KSL 5 news at 6 - 4th grade teacher Annette Krueger (Youtube)
Punavision - Punahou School, Honolulu, Hawaii's French Teacher (Youtube)

Reiche, Community Schools, and Teacher-Powered Schools

I typically scan briefly through the NEA magazines that come in the mail before tossing them in the recycling bin. There's not much in them that I usually care about, but an article in the Winter 2016 (When Teachers Take Charge by Mary Ellen Flannery, no link because it doesn't appear to be available online edit: link below) caught my eye. I folded the page over and saved it for reading later.

The article tells the story of Howard C. Reiche Community School in Portland, Maine (which kept throwing me off every time I read it because my mind automatically assumed we were talking about Oregon), a "teacher-powered school," meaning that a few of the teachers act as part-time leaders, eliminating the need for administration.

The website listed at the end of the article, TeacherPowered.org, lists 90 schools currently utilizing this teacher-leader structure. This may be the extremist in me speaking, but this idea doesn't seem crazy or outlandish at all. In fact, compared to some of the things I've written about before, this seems rather mundane. I've spoken about students running schools. OF COURSE teachers can function as part-time administrators. Why would anyone ever find that strange?

So, there are those links for anyone that finds it interesting. The website even includes guides for getting started converting your existing school into a Teacher-Powered School.

What I found more interesting were the pictures included in the NEA article. Reiche is a beautiful, open layout school that looks like a huge library with tons of open space available for small groups to use as necessary. The school's website lists 3-4 classes per grade, so I assume the class structure is pretty typical, unfortunately, but seeing the pictures, I couldn't help but dream, anyway. Think of all the good that could be done with that nice, open layout, book-laden space!

Reiche labels itself as a "Community School," which also sounds intriguing. Wikipedia describes community schools as places open for education of the entire community, which is awesome. I always imagined my dream school as a place that doesn't close down in the evening because there's always something going on, adult continuing ed. classes, parenting classes, extra curriculars, etc. There's also some federal funding for such programming, but it's unclear at this point in my research whether any of it goes as far as my ideal.

Hopefully at some point in the future the article about Reiche will become available online so I can post it for the picture!

Edit 4/2016: Found it! Check out these awesome pictures!

Work Period and the Menu System

My greatest accomplishment during my year teaching third grade was a system I developed and used for one quarter, a little over three months. Initially, it started as a contemplation of how I would run the ideal classroom if given the chance. Months after writing that linked article, those thoughts were still swimming around my head, begging for a chance to be let out. Well, no better time than the present, I decided. I worked at a private school, where it was more feasible to try something potentially radical than at a public school, so why not?

I started brainstorming how to make it possible. I rearranged our schedule, providing a two-hour work period in the morning, an hour shy of a traditional Montessori work period, but that's what I could give. (Click images to view the full screen.)

Then I wrote up new rules specifically for this work period:

1. You must work quietly enough not to disturb others.
2. If you are being disturbed, let that person know politely. If someone tells you that you are disturbing them, simply apologize and change the distracting behavior.
3. If you need help, ask someone around you.
4. You may work together with any number of peers, as long as you are on task.
5. Log everything in your Daily Schedule Keeping Notebook.
6. When you are finished with a workbook page, check your answers with your peers. If the answers don't match, find out why. Defend and justify your answer if you think it is correct, but listen politely to the other person. See if you can find a flaw in their reasoning.
7. Workbook pages must have 5 signatures of peers that agree with your reasoning.

And in January, we began.

The system itself is broken up into three main parts: the weekly menus of assignments, daily schedule keeping, and conferencing.

I started out with default menus--everything that we had been doing together in class. It looked a little something like this:

Math lessons, a story and fluency practice from our silly basal reader, grammar and spelling book pages, science (switched out with social studies every other week), daily reflection, and silent reading--everything that the students were used to doing, nothing new. We had spent five months doing these same sorts of assignments, the only difference was that now they had the option of when to do the assignments, in what order, and whom with. I passed out the menus every Monday, and it was expected that all assignments would be completed by Friday. I had some students that completed everything in class and others that needed to take some things home for homework. I let them know that either was acceptable, as long as everything got accomplished.

Meanwhile, I held small lessons (a schedule of which was posted on the board on Mondays), and the students were free to attend if they so wished. They could also skip it and just read the textbook.

My intention was to get the students used to the menu for a couple of weeks, then work with them during conferencing to tailor an individual menu for the following week based on their needs. This part never got off the ground, unfortunately, for a number of reasons. It was such a new idea for the students that they, having never experienced it before, didn't quite know what to do with it. When asked what individual projects they'd like to work on, they were at a loss. I came up with a few ideas, age-appropriate anatomy books to study for those who said their parents wanted them to become doctors, animal encyclopedias to flip through for those interested in animals, and art projects for those interested in art, all of which were accepted and at least attempted, but they rarely came up with ideas of their own accord. This being my first time with the system, too, I didn't have as many resources as I found I needed. On top of that, it was time consuming, and I was frequently strapped for time and stressed. So, for the most part, we just stuck with the default menus the whole quarter long.

The second part of the system is the daily schedule keeping. I had the students start a new spiral notebook, in which they were to record everything done during work period. Two examples:

Along with the date (which should either be at the top of the page, for those that started a new page each day, or beside the first assignment of the day, for those that filled up a page with multiple days), assignment (which should include page numbers or other identifying remarks), and time spent, I also asked students to record who they worked with and a short comment about the difficulty, mostly as a small, frequent exercise in reflective thinking.

Finally, the last component, daily and weekly conferencing.

At first, I tried to gamify it. My husband, a computer programmer and even bigger gamer than I am, had been trying to get me to add gamification features to my class since before I even signed the contract, and hearing about my system, took it upon himself to design a program, which we called Class Quest, to go with it. Unfortunately, he got busy with work and the program never got completed, but basically, it rewarded students for the work they did during the day (taking into consideration both effort and completion, of course). His designs differed in some ways to what I wanted, but here are a couple of concept designs I created for it:

Students' names in columns, their individual "experience points" below. When clicked privately on the teacher's computer, a pop-up would appear allowing for points and comments to be entered. Beside each student's name, a big "Contribute!" button that they could go to the front of the classroom and press on the SmartBoard, adding their exp to the class total and filling a large progress bar at the top of the screen. Under the progress bar, Current Total Experience and Points Needed to Next Level, clearly visible.

And when the progress bar filled completely, Level Up! A notice would appear signifying what achievement, or reward, was unlocked.

But since the program wasn't finished by January, I made the interface manually, black marker on poster board. I added the individual exp on sticky notes next to each student's name, wrote the class total exp, and marked it out with correction fluid to fill in the updated total on Fridays. I tried to give a rough estimation of filling in the progress bar accurately, but it soon became too much work and remained ignored, for the most part. Unfortunately, I never got a picture of the whole thing.

Daily conferencing went something like this: during the final hour of the day, I called students to my desk individually, and they would bring their Daily Schedule Keeping notebook and anything they had worked on, such as workbooks or journals. They told me about their work, and experience points were awarded for each item. I wanted desperately for the points to seem as automatic as possible, not at all arbitrary or up to my discretion, but that's a difficult impression to create, especially not having a finished-looking product like what Class Quest to support me. Each assignment, entry, or homework was worth 10 exp. Well, that was the idea, anyway. I had a difficult time, personally, allowing points to be distributed freely, as I was still trying to determine what my role was.

Reading and fluency practice were easy enough assignments, and I felt like I could trust that students had done them appropriately. When those were written down, they automatically counted for points. Science and social studies journals, reflection journals, and story analyses were all graded at the end of the week, so I took the stance that effort on those counted for experience points while accuracy counted for grades. They counted for automatic points, as well.

Workbooks, on the other hand, were a different matter. Where the science and social studies textbooks could be read for the information needed to answer the questions at the end of the lesson, our math and grammar curricula weren't designed that way. They were meant to be completed only after having been through the lesson with an instructor who was following the teacher's manual. The grammar workbook had a small blurb of minimal instructions to be followed on each page, but not really enough information for a third grader to understand the point that was trying to be made with the given practice. The math workbook had no explanation whatsoever to aid in solution of the problems. They were not meant for my Menu system.

I could have made math and grammar lessons mandatory. I could have video recorded them for individuals or small groups to watch at their leisure, a la the flipped classroom. But I didn't. My desire for the system to inherently work made me blind to this flaw, and I maintained that students who wanted to do assignments properly would eventually learn to come to the lesson. I had failed to consider the human nature, the inclination towards easy mode. My students did the best they could on their assignments with the knowledge that they had and could easily gather, though that often meant guessing. But they were intelligent guessers. They considered problems they had encountered previously and attempted to solve new problems likewise. Unfortunately, math (and grammar, too, to some extent, considering that the majority of my class was bilingual, if not ESOL) is a broad subject involving many skills that third graders just haven't had exposure to. And how were they to get that exposure if not from coming to lessons, since no textbook of information was available to read? I had tried to plan for the option of using other students' knowledge as a resource by requiring signatures of agreement on workbook pages, but even that wasn't enough. Their requests for signatures rarely crossed gender boundaries, and strong-willed students were often able to convince weaker-willed or unsure students of incorrect answers. Proper resources just weren't made available.

Thus, I felt the need to check workbooks for accuracy. I deducted experience points for missed question, scolding that if the child is confused, it should be taken as evidence that they need to come to the lessons. I knew subconsciously at the time that I was going about it in the wrong way, and it's especially difficult in retrospect. Guilt is definitely not an emotion a teacher should inspire in her children.

Daily conferencing was the most stressful time of the day, but refusing to acknowledge the aforementioned was only partially to blame. That hour always felt like a race against the clock. I never felt like I had enough time to spend with each student, even though there were only 14. Four-ish minutes to devote to an individual, allow them to express honest feelings about the material they're learning, assess how they're doing, and giving points that may or may not be arbitrarily distributed? We often ran late for dismissal. But what was I to do? My husband recommended splitting the class in half, only conferencing with each student every other day. I suppose it was worth a chance, but I was skeptical and never got around to trying it.

Weekly conferencing wasn't much better. Because I didn't have the program to rely on, we had to find another work-around--I turned on the SmartBoard on Fridays and opened a calculator, allowing the students to see the numbers as they were added. I stayed silent during this process, but there were always a couple of students standing behind me watching. Therefore, when someone sitting at their desk inquired whose points were currently being added, there was readily someone to supply the answer. I had mixed feelings about the connotations implied in knowing how many experience points each classmate had earned, but it would have been apparent on my version of Class Quest, too. Somehow I must have overlooked that. My indecision was my decision, and I never asked those students to sit down.

Not to mention how doing all the work with the calculator myself removed the feeling of contribution from the whole ordeal. That's not how it was intended. If they got the feeling that they were contributing to some sort of cause, I'm sure it must have been latent.

But it was always very exciting when we earned enough experience points to level up. After a moment of cheering came the question of what achievement had been unlocked. Again, because the program wasn't completed, that left me to verbally announce the reward. Class Quest would have declared the achievement automatically, in a seemingly unambiguous manner. In truth, I would have set the awards and exp needed for the next level personally, so it wouldn't have been any different, but just the fact that I had to announce them myself probably seemed at least a little suspicious to some. Weekly conferencing days were frustrating ones.

In true game fashion, I had planned for the initial levels to be easily attainable and give small rewards, but become more difficult to achieve, giving better payout as time went on. Apparently I didn't convey this sufficiently, because there were constant complaints that the levels took too long to reach and that the achievements weren't desirable. I don't recall all of the rewards they unlocked, though the first was Extra Recess Time. I thought that surely this would be a nice reward, but apparently not everyone felt the same. Towards the end of February, when a riot nearly broke out at the concept of unlocking a Healthy Food Party, I decided to suspend the Level system. For the remainder of the quarter, we continued daily conferencing as before, though no experience points were awarded. (For the record, everyone enjoyed the Healthy Food Party, as they had enjoyed the other unlockables. It was as though they dismissed the concepts outright, assuming that they weren't good enough before even considering them as viable options.)

There was an easy fix for this problem, to be fair. My husband's concept of Class Quest was much more in depth than what I designed. It was incredibly detailed, based off of Star Trek Online, a game he was playing frequently at the time, and it ran more on currencies than experience points and leveling up. (I guess my personal gaming history of mostly RPGs made conceptualizing game design limited to RPG qualities, when perhaps the model of a strategy game like STO is more suited to the classroom.) There were currency points for class work, as in my design, but also points for behavior, attitude, attendance, and so forth, and it offered multiple unlockables simultaneously, each requiring a different amount of the various currencies. The idea was for the class to work together to decide which reward to attempt to unlock, though each student would still be able to contribute their points as they saw fit. Juggling all of the different currencies would definitely have been too much for me to handle in my first play through of this class game, considering how much I struggled with only one point system, but having the rewards known before they were unlocked would have benefit my students. If there's only one take away to be had from this experience in gamification, it's this: students do not appreciate hidden or surprise achievements. (Though honestly, I guess I knew that, having attended a couple of gamification panels at PAX that I guess I didn't think enough of to write about or even remember when it mattered. Now that I'm thinking about it, they also told me that requirements for unlocking achievements need to be known, as well. Must remember for future reference!) However, my husband just recently discovered a website similar to his design of Class Quest that takes his ideas even farther and even incorporates some aspects of table top role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, turning the instructor into a Dungeon Master. How neat! I'll definitely have to explore it more and see if it's something I can use next year with my high schoolers. It's name is even similar to what we had thought up--Class Craft. Anyway...

Now for the most difficult part to relay.

At the end of March, third quarter report cards were released, and many of my students' grades had fallen. It was to be expected. This was a brand new experience for these students. They had never been exposed to anything but a traditional classroom setting with a traditional teacher who held their hands and all but spoon-fed them answers. Alright, that may be a bit of a biased exaggeration, but honestly, it was a new, experimental system, and I was asking the students to learn in a way they weren't accustomed to. It's understandable that they should take some time to adapt. It didn't mean that they weren't learning. What's more, I assumed that they were learning more valuable lessons than that which basic curricula could teach, like taking responsibility for one's own learning, prioritizing, self-pacing, pride in doing one's work, and contributing to a community. However, I must not have articulated this well enough, either.

One parent, whose daughter had been a straight A student, was so upset, she came in to speak with the principal, wanting removing the menu system altogether. And when I sat down with them, I somehow could convince neither of them of the benefits of the system. I failed as an effective communicator. I was required to teach whole class for the remainder of the year.

The worst part, I think, is that the project was ended abruptly, exactly in the middle, which the worst possible time. My students had just begun to see the results of their actions. They were just beginning to see that their actions had direct consequences. I had intended to teach my students that if they want to learn, they are able to take it upon themselves to do so. I intended to teach them perseverance over time and the value of learning new skills, including thinking in new, unfamiliar ways. Instead, I fear that the only thing they've learned is that if something proves difficult, if you complain to the right people, they can get you out of it. That's definitely not the skill I wanted to get across, and I'm incredibly saddened by it. I guess it's just another way that the world works, and I have no doubt that they will grow up to use that information to their advantage as adults. This could be even worse to consider, but what can you do? It's the world doing what the world does, and it's just unfortunate that I got caught up in it and wasn't persuasive enough to change it. Maybe the lessons that I, myself, learned in the process will make a difference to another batch of students.

So I bit my tongue and did as I was told, because it was the only thing I could do. Most of the remainder of the school year was taken up with standardized testing, anyway. And if it's any consolation, when I had to tell parents during parent-teacher conferences that the program had to be canceled, a number of them were genuinely saddened. They saw the benefit in an innovative system, and it was frustrating to them that there was nothing they could do either.

Initial Thoughts About Teaching Montessori in a Public School Classroom

As crazy as it sounds, I've been thinking about going back to public school. I know that's where the kids need me the most and where I can make the biggest difference, I just have to convince administration that I'm a professional and that they can trust me to make professional decisions. I'm not sure how likely I am to find an administration like that, especially in Kansas.

Although there was some unexpected and unprecedented news out of Seattle yesterday, when an entire high school decided not to administer a standardized test. There may be some hope yet. I just don't know how much I want to fight. I'm only 24, but I feel as though my activist years are coming to a close.

Come what may, it may be time for me to finally step up and take a class of my own under my wing. For better or worse, I have chosen teaching as my career, and I need to stop beating around the bush and answer my calling.

All of these thoughts have led me to think--if I COULD run a classroom anyway I chose, without administration breathing down my neck, how would I do it?

Montessori style.

And, for the record, I'm talking MY Montessori style, not traditional with all of the approved and endorsed Montessori things. You don't need to spend thousands of dollars at Nienhuis to have a quality program, and I don't plan to. That's not what Montessori is truly about. Honestly, I plan on taking my Montessori training (I DID enroll in a Montessori training program, did I mention that?) and mixing it with little bits and pieces of whatever I feel is beneficial, no matter where I end up.

At any rate, here are my initial thoughts about teaching Montessori in a public school.

To begin with, I'd like to have a regular routine of work periods in which children can decide what to accomplish for themselves.

Because there will be many activities occurring simultaneously, it will be expected that the volume-level of the classroom remain low, so that everyone can concentrate--not an easy task for a traditional public school classroom.

I would probably have to rely on a menu system, as in the Montessori school I volunteered at for a semester. I couldn't find a link explaining it, so basically, the guide and individual children cooperatively decide what objectives need to be met, lessons need to be learned, and works need to be practiced for a week or set period of time. It sounds like a daunting task, but I see it as necessary. Eventually the children and I will get into the habit of it.

Similarly, I will need to teach reflection skills and how to document and be responsible for one's own learning. So not only will they help to choose what they need to work on each week, the students will record their progress and how well they met those objectives.

As far as teaching itself goes, I will probably be expected to teach from a specified curriculum, no matter how wonderful administration may be. Obviously, some children will not be ready for information, and they will not learn at that point even (or perhaps especially) if I made them sit down and listen to it. Thus, every child will be responsible for learning the material on their own terms. I will give the lesson once at a time specified on the board at the beginning of the week, and the children will be welcome to join me for it or not. They could alternatively read the material on their own, with a peer, or have a peer teach them at a later date. I DO hope to inspire a lot of peer teaching, somehow. That's something else I will have to look into how to create.

I will maintain that the students join me for morning circle, however. It's an important time to build the classroom, give important updates and news, and discuss anything that needs to be discussed.

And, of course, there will be what is referred to currently as "specials," (P.E., art, music, etc.), recess, and lunch that will be at determined times, but other than those and morning (and perhaps closing) circle, all other times will be work time. (Uggh, I can just imagine now how disruptive fire and tornado drills will be for this kind of setting.)

And then there's the environment--a classroom designed for highest efficiency by the children. Several small areas for different activities, walls showing off posters and projects the students use to document learning and teach peers about their own learning, a large classroom library, a number of laptops (perhaps supplied by a grant? I could do that, I think), a water cooler with individual student cups or water bottles, a small fridge with snacks of fruit or other healthy snacks brought in by students and provided by me...

So, walking into my classroom during work period, you'd see students working quietly on a number of activities:
* a small group with me learning a new lesson from mandated curriculum
* one child tutoring another in a lesson he is unsure of
* a child researching information on the internet and writing a cited report of her findings
* two children working on a project to present to the class
* a child watching others work to familiarize himself with a work before attempting it himself
* a child practicing by himself a skill learned earlier in the week
* a child writing a story
* a child writing a self-reflection about her own learning
* a couple of scattered children reading to themselves

A lot going on. A lot of responsibility and a lot of learning. I'm thrilled at the prospect. I hope I get a chance to make it work.

Toddlers and Pretend Play

I've been spending the past week and a half with the youngest at the daycare again, a class of 12- to 24-month-olds. They certainly keep me on my toes. Once, the box of plastic food and dishes was out when I came in in the morning. I'm not too fond of this box in any classroom, the biggest reason being that the direct representation of food doesn't lend itself to creativity like a box of only dishes would. But in the youngest's room, there's something else at hand as well.

When I first spent time with the littlest ones, I taught about how playing with pretend food means only pretending to put the toys in one's mouth. It was to little success. I watched the older ones take to it reasonably well, but they were two years old already or fast approaching. The littler ones couldn't seem to comprehend the practice, and when I went in that morning, I was frustrated already because I knew that almost all of the children in the room that day were closer to 12 months than 24.

Yet the toys were already out, so I had no other choice than to begin the long struggle that felt like, "come on, please mimic me already!" For the half an hour that remained until outside time, I watched the eyes and faces of the children as I carefully explained again and again, "No, not in our mouth. Just pretend," and demonstrated. It just wasn't there. There was no understanding on any of their faces.

This box has no purpose in this room, I thought to myself. These kids are just too young to understand how to pretend.

It hit me all at once what I had just realized.

Well, that's it then. I guess I really am a Montessori teacher.

One of the most common arguments I hear against Montessori education is about the lack of imaginative play in the classroom. The link in the above post writes well on the topic, but even upon reading it, I still hadn't made up my mind definitively on the issue until that moment last week.

Even in the older classrooms, some toddlers still don't understand pretend play, as evidenced by the teeth marks on every piece of plastic food and dishes in the establishment. They must be told very specifically that, "That is a toy. We don't put toys in our mouths. It's just for pretend," and I haven't seen any other teacher say this.

So I know now that I believe children can't understand pretend play until around the age of two, but what of giving imaginative play toys to older toddlers?

Well, children will play whatever they need to play in order to develop the skills they currently need, despite what invitations we make available for them through toys. A friend recently described to me how her two-year-old gave voices to and played dolls with crayons one day. Similarly, my parents have a photograph of me playing intently on the floor with a piece of trash that looks like a wadded up piece of paper. If children want to play housekeeping, nothing will stop them from finding what they need to do so, but I don't believe that we need to provide them with the confusing, mixed messages that pretend toys send.

(It's a little disheartening to me to realize this, actually, as I was planning on giving my two-year-old nephew the elegant, painted wood Food Cutting set from Melissa and Doug as a gift. Although it does list the age the toy is appropriate for as 3+. Unfortunately, because I'm a long-distance aunt, I don't get to spend as much time with him to know when he would truly benefit the most from this gift.)

In the meantime, what should these little ones be working with? Well, pouring, scooping, matching, classifying, and practicing cleaning various things. You know, Montessori activities. :)

Word Harvesting

In February of this year, I had the opportunity to attend a professional development seminar by Tim Rasinski. He's a great and inspiring educator, but the thing that held my attention was something he mentioned only briefly, and that was an approach to vocabulary he called Word Harvesting. He read an article about a school whose test scores went up so tremendously that they were audited to see if the tests had been altered in any way. The scores were authentic, and, after looking into it, were found to be attributed to this style of vocabulary instruction. I'll come back to this story after I talk more about what Word Harvesting is and how to implement it.

During the seminar, Rasinski read the first few pages of the Caldecott and Newberry award winning children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, asking us to note any words a child might not be familiar with. In another demonstration, a hypothetical class studied one poem a week, picking out words to study. In both instances, students use authentic texts to focus on words they might otherwise read around. The next step is to put these words on a word wall and discuss their meaning. Afterward, the students and teacher use these new words in everyday conversation.

One of the things that intrigued me the most about the aforementioned article about the school with improved test scores was that classrooms walls became absolutely covered with chart paper recording these harvested words. I have a sort of pet peeve about creating artificial classroom environments, but this an example of a truly authentic environment. What better way to decorate your communal space than with words you mean to (and want to remember to) use on a day-to-day basis? And what better way to demonstrate to your students how important vocabulary is than to help them fill their environment with it? I found that to be a very powerful message.

So when I started student teaching with my 4th grade class, I wanted to implement this into our schedule.

The students were incredibly excited about it to begin with. The classroom teacher did not have a word wall to begin with, so I didn't have to "change the rules" of it, which I was a little nervous for. Rather, I began fresh with a blank bulletin board and explained our process. I handed each student a sticky note to either keep on their desk or use as a book mark (I'm the type of person that would use it as a book mark). I told them that I would normally tell students to write down any word they didn't know the definition of, but that because I wasn't sure how many of those we were going to find, I wanted them to write down any word they found interesting and wanted to add to their vocabulary. (Turns out there were actually a lot of words they came across that they didn't know.) We talked briefly about our academic vocabulary vs. daily vocabulary ("the words we know and understand vs. the words we actually use when we speak"). I reminded the students to write relatively small so that multiple words could be recorded on the same sticky note (and to remember to record the page number and book from which they found the word), but left the pad of sticky notes where they could access them at any time.

The 4th graders were excited to find interesting words and to announce their words to the class. Because so many wanted to share every day, I decided to call name sticks so that each child got a fair chance to share. I had the students state their vocabulary word, find the word in the online dictionary projected on the SMARTboard, and read the definition aloud. I wrote the word on a standard-sized index card while they did so and stapled it to the bulletin board. Then we discussed the word and attempted to use it in sentences.

The first problem was that once I called a name stick, the other students, disappointed, checked out. They seemed not to care about words their classmates found, only their own words. They didn't want to create sentences with the new words, and at times I couldn't even the student that gave the word to create an original sentence using it. How could I have made this more interesting? Probably by solving the second problem.

Which was in using the vocabulary words in daily context. I recognize that this was absolutely my fault in failure to model properly. I can only clearly remember using one harvested vocabulary word in everyday speech. I know it's difficult, but I now see that, for the entire method to work, the teacher must devote special attention to using the words her students have harvested. I know that's the critical point that I missed. It's tricky and requires flexibility and concentration, but it's absolutely necessary.

A third, smaller problem was the time required to discussing and defining harvested words. I say it's a small problem because while it does take time, so does anything worth doing. I found that I needed about 3-5 minutes per student/word, and on the days I did it, I usually only got around to two or three students. Perhaps the process would have gone faster if we devoted more time to it and got into the swing of it.

From 4th Grade Student Teaching

Resources:
*Unfortunately, although I emailed Rasinski for the article he read from during the seminar, he did not respond with a link or title.
*Vocabulogic -- Word Harvesting: Using Authentic Literature as the Source for Vocabulary Learning (Rasinski)
*Center for Development and Learning -- Word Harvesting: Using Authentic Literature as the Source for Vocabulary Learning (written by Tim Rasinski)
*Essential Strategies for Word Study, a book by Tim Rasinski and Jerry Zutell
*Word Knowledge - Harvesting Words, a Scholastic PDF from the above book

Practicing Pretend: First Week in Child Care

I've now worked at the day care for one week (technically four days, because Monday was a holiday). It was tough at first, getting into the swing of things, and the morning before my second day, I thought to myself, Just WHAT have I gotten myself into? Thankfully, every day since has been progressively easier. It really is a less stressful job than that of a public school teacher, I've found. Yes, every job has its perks as well as troubles, but I'm absolutely enjoying this atmosphere. I'm still in training, but I look forward to getting a "classroom" of my own. Aside from the 30 minutes today I stepped into an "older-kids" room (I'm not sure if it was considered a "Kindergarten class" or a "School-age class"), I've still only worked with the toddlers, but I'm actually liking it more than I expected to, and I'm sure that's because of ratios. The toddler room is kept at a 1:5 teacher-child ratio, while the pre-K rooms are 1:8, Kindergarten rooms are 1:12, and school-age rooms are a big 1:20. After my student teaching, I definitely like to keep to as few children as possible so I can focus and stay devoted to them. But it certainly is a change to get used to caring for such little ones.

If I have the opportunity, there are a few things I'd like to implement when I have a room that primarily I will be in charge of:
1 - In Montessori fashion, get less toys on the shelves. With less to distract, children will be able to focus easily on the thing in front of them. Plus, it's less for a little one to be responsible for--less for a little one to need to clean up.
2 - In Montessori/Waldorf fashion, include no toys that beep or make noises or music. The more that a toy does for a child, the less the child has to do for herself. With simpler toys, a child is left to exercise her creativity in order to play.
3 - In Vivian Gussin Paley fashion (and Teacher Tom after her), allow ample story telling, recording of children's own stories, and reading aloud and reenacting of those stories.
4 - Ample singing (even in, gasp!, foreign languages), word play, and nursery rhymes to promote phonemic awareness.
5 - Frequent hand washing, particularly after coming in from playing elsewhere or eating, or after potty training, to promote proper hygiene.
6 - I'm lucky enough to work at a facility that encourages daily teeth brushing, but it's best not to brush right after eating. I'll save our brushing until after nap time.
7 - Time-outs reserved solely for when a child actively defies the teacher. I debated this one for a while. I didn't want to include time-outs at all because it's more effective to simply discuss behavior and use it as a learning opportunity. However, it has happened this week that toddlers have said, "No," to a request I'd given, and, for the safety of the child, I simply cannot allow that to develop into a habit. As tough as it is to admit, I truly DO need children to follow directions. I will keep their best interests at heart and never ask them to do anything unnecessary, but when a child decides to disobey, I'll need to follow through with a 2-minute time-out.

Until that time, I still have some more training to do!

Recently, the toddlers have been interested in picture books around the end of the day and have been allowing me to read to them for about an hour each day. It keeps their focus well actually, and what's great about having two adults in the room is that when they grow restless, the little ones can find something else to occupy themselves with while I keep reading to the ones that are still interested. Most of the time they come back after about ten minutes, anyway.

Today we practiced proper Pretend etiquette, which I'm proud of. We had the plastic food out, and many of the toddlers were putting the toys in their mouths. I know that they're one- and two-years old, but most of them have runny noses, and one went home yesterday with a 102 temp after nap. With that in mind, I sprung into action. One at a time, starting with the current offenders and then moving to the rest whenever the issue arose again, I began a game/discussion/lesson of how to pretend without putting toys into mouths.

My words went something like this:
While gently pulling the hand that's holding the toy away from the face, "[Child's name], no, we can't put the food in our mouth. Just pretend that you're eating that [food item]. Watch me." Then I'd demonstrate the procedure of miming eating, either with the toy they were playing with or another that's in front of me. "See? I'm pretending to eat the [food item], but I'm not really putting it in my mouth. It's just pretend. Now you try it." Next I'd hand over the toy I was using to demonstrate. If they continued to play by putting the toy in their mouth, I'd start over, but if they followed my lead at that point, I'd say, "That's right! I like the way you're pretending to eat the [food item], but you're not really putting it in your mouth."

A couple of them picked up on it very quickly while others needed more practice. The youngest (I believe she's 20 months?) didn't seem comprehend the "game" at all, but I was glad to keep showing her, anyway. The second youngest, however, occasionally after our lesson, held a purple, plastic fork in the air for me to "eat" from. Perhaps as a reminder to himself of what to do with said fork?

One boy preferred to ignore the plastic food all together and focus on the epitome of pretend food, the invisible kind. He brought me a red plastic bowl and proclaimed it to be french fries, while shaking a small, red, plastic bottle of "ketchup" over it, and when I'd "eaten" it all, he'd run back to the play kitchen to bring me more, ad nauseum. But honestly, I was glad to play, knowing the repetition was building his creativity and confidence.

Little ones certainly demand a lot of patience, I'm learning! And I'm happy to say that I'm able to provide them with it.

Edit (7/14/12):
After more thought, I've come up with some other things I would do to a daycare classroom. Reggio Emilia schools create spaces using the philosophy, "The environment is the third teacher," emphasizing the importance creating a classroom in which children can thrive. That being said I'd like to:

-Remove the rocking chair. I'm continually telling children not to play on it. It creates too much of a hazard of squished fingers or toes. The rocking chair is mainly for rocking inconsolable children, but I don't find it necessary. For a couple of weeks when I had a 14-month-old that cried during nap, I picked him up and stood with him, swaying slightly, to quiet him. But I'd like to use that method sparingly, as well, as to not build a dependence on that type of behavior. The rocking chair is the only adult-sized chair in the room, but that's okay, because I would add...

-Floor pillows of many shapes, sizes, and colors. They can be used as large, soft toys or for seating.

-Remove all meaningless wall decorations and replace them with rotating artwork made by the children, including large, communal pieces on butcher paper.

-Remove all cartoon-y toys so that only realistic toys are present. Young children have a difficult time determinging fantasy from reality (another Montessori philosophy), and I don't want to contribute to that. For example, leave the stuffed toys fashioned after koalas, birds, and cats, but remove Barney (that's not what dinosaurs looked like) and Elmo (is he considered a monster?).

And just for clarification to number 2 above, the noise-makers I was referring to were all electronic. Instruments, like bells, drums, or guitars made out of empty boxes and rubber bands (although probably not the latter for the young infants), are fine by me.