February Fun!

February has been quite the eventful month, starting with saying goodbye to our phenomenal school leader at the beginning of the month. The kids all decorated these amazing banners with a few of her favorite quotes on them to present to her. They also chanted the first chant that our school leader ever taught us, Read Baby Read!

We celebrated our brains being 100 days smarter on the 100^th day of school celebration!

We took our learning off campus with a trip to the Meyerson Symphony Center to go see “Peter and the Wolf!”

Our scholars completed Black History Month Projects about someone that inspires them. We dedicated a day to talking about the importance of Black History Month and some of our scholars took a risk and acted in a play about The Story of Ruby Bridges!

And some of our kinder babies got to see the first snow fall! :)

Going the Extra Yard for teachers!

I am so thankful that my corps experience led me to Dallas, Texas as they have hosted several major sporting events during my time here. How does ESPN relate to teaching? Well…the first National Championship decided to honor teachers and host the first ever Extra Yard Teacher’s Summit, which was quite possibly the best teacher summit I’ve had the privilege to attend. We heard from a Google Education specialist, a student from the first ever KIPP class in Houston, the CEO and founder of DonorsChoose.org and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I left completely inspired by their moving words and am more ready than ever to impact the classroom during my last semester of TFA. Not only did they inspire through words but concluding the event they announced that every teacher in the audience that had a current project on DonorsChoose.org would be completely funded by the organization. It was like Oprah teacher version.

Happy Holidays from Texas Tech!

To celebrate the holiday season we had a winter concert with our kindergarten and first graders. They looked absolutely adorable in their costumes! Here are a few pictures from their performance and from our themed Pajama/Polar Express Day! J

(Pajama Day watching the Polar Express) 

(Admit one to the Polar Express!) 

(The little Santas getting ready to perform!)

(The first grade elves getting ready to perform!)

(One of my students drew me the U of A "A" and he always tells me about how he watches them on TV) :) 

(Do you want to build a snowman kits that we made for our scholars!) 

H a p p y  H o l i d a y s !

Life Skills Literacy

So I am probably the worst blogger ever seeing that I haven’t posted a thing since September. It has been crazy busy between getting my Masters of Ed from Johns Hopkins and teaching my kinder babies. It has also been a year of several lessons learned along the way.

My first year of teaching was far from easy but I wasn’t presented with half as many challenges in the classroom as I am now. I have learned more than ever that there is no “formula” to being an effective teacher. It is a continuous learning and growth experience that you have to be open to each step of the way. I have learned that just because some things may have worked last year it by no means is guaranteed to work with a new class. When given a completely different class, YOU need to mold to them and not expect them to fit in the perfectly Pinterest inspired box that you had set up and planned for. Yes that means they may not fall in love with the table names hung with burlap and rhinestoned clothes pins quite the way you did when you spent hours this summer…that’s real.

I feel that entering the second half of the year I am more excited than ever to continue to figure out my mold and how I can best support my scholars in their academic and social accomplishments. While our class has endured several social and emotional challenges throughout the year, I have developed a curriculum to teach these lagging skills through children’s literacy books, "Life Skills Literacy." I at first of course searched online for hours to find one, thinking that this HAD to have been done before, but I found nothing built out. So remembering those entrepreneurial skills learned from Eller, I decided to create my own. The list of skills are taken from J. Stuart Ablon's research surrounding the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach and then I aligned these skills to our KIPP IMPACT values (Inquire, Make it Better, Persist Toward Excellence, Appreciate and Care and Take a Risk).

Here is a TEDD Talk from J. Stuart Ablon on Challenging Behavior (AMAZING stuff!) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuoPZkFcLVs 

Check it out!

(Anchor chart aligned to The Rainbow Fish- sharing and problem solving)

(Picture of the Life Skills Literacy wall in our classroom) 

(Anchor chart example)

Email me if you would like the resources to implement this in your classroom! myles@email.arizona.edu

In addition to investing them in their personal growth with social and emotional lagging skills, I have begun to further invest them in the academic goals. I once heard an educator say “We know we’ve made it when you can do it without me.” This stuck with me and in turn I have design a system around this statement. I made an anchor chart for my scholars and we talk about being independent and what this means (of course…in 5 year old language… “I do it all by myself.”) We talk about each part of our day and why it’s important to be independent and what that will mean for growing our brains!

I have recently put the focus on “why” we come to my guided reading table. I aligned our STEP (literacy or reading) tracker to our classroom data tracker so that they are able to understand and be motivated at guided reading.

(Picture of our literacy/STEP tracker)

They are invested in their STEP data and they understand the meaning behind the green, red and blue dots (Red- reading below average, Green- reading on level, Blue- reading above level). They understand that if they pass a certain STEP level they will earn an item on our tracker and will be either below, on or above average reading levels. In the middle of quiet time one of my students came over to me and said “Can we do my STEP test now? I really want to see if I can pass STEP 3 so I can add more blue to our tracker for the class!” I melted knowing how invested he was in not only his personal growth but the growth for the class. 

My scholars from this year and last are teaching me more lessons each day than I could ever teach them. I can’t wait to see what this next half of the year has in store. J

Raider Power

While it was hard to let go of the fact that my old “Red Raiders” would be moving on to first grade and new colleges within KDE, I told them that they could always be Red Raiders at heart. We invited some of the Red Raiders from last year to come and tell our new class “What it means to be a Red Raider.” While I didn’t prep them on what to say (which in hindsight could have been a big teacher mistake), the things that they decided to say on their own shocked me. I was expecting them to say things like don’t throw crayons or sit in your chair but they said things like: “It means to stay strong, we are one team and we work together to overcome challenges. It means we grow our brains so we can go to college. It means we learn our values. It means we learn our values but we also act them out. Our values are Persist Toward Excellence, Care, Take a Risk…, It means that when we come to a word we don’t know when we are reading we never give up but we sound it out and keep trying.” They are six years old. I looked at Ms. Jackson and we both had tears in our eyes. We didn’t realize the impact that KIPP and our class had on our scholars until that very moment. Teaching is difficult. Most of the time you don’t see the long term impact that you make. This was such a gift. Hearing them saying these things and believing in themselves. I will never forget that moment.

Seeing my class from last year around KIPP Destiny in the first grade hall has made me realize what leaders they are becoming and how KIPP has made an impact. One of my scholars from last year in particular comes to mind. This was one that often had me staying up countless hours to figure out just how I could get them to sit on the carpet (Criss-cross was out of the question at this point, all I wanted was just on the carpet!) and the one that managed to find “emu” and squeak it (the squeaky bird puppet) no matter how many places I tried to hide it.  One day last year, I was walking with this scholar in the hall, it had been a long day and there had definitely been some challenges. I knew he was disappointed in himself and I realized I hadn’t told him how much potential he has and that he is loved. I squeezed his hand 3 times (just as my Dad used to do to me). I said “Do you know what that means? It means I love you. 1 squeeze for I, 1 squeeze for love and 1 squeeze for you.” I had only done it a few times after that before the year ended. This year I saw my scholar again, he was getting picked up and when I walked him to the car line, I squeezed his hand 3 times. I asked “Do you remember?” He smiled and said I love you. I thought for sure after 3 months had passed and well… him being 6…that he would have forgotten, but sure enough he remembered. J

Classroom Makeover

While I did graduate from the University of Arizona and anyone who knows me knows I am wild about my cats… I have let another University take a place in my heart. Nope… not Johns Hopkins…but Texas Tech. Our class theme is Texas Tech again this year, as the kindergarten classes are all Texas Universities. This year Erin (my co-teacher) and I got really into the theme for the classroom! See the pictures for some college themed ideas for trackers, word walls, tables names, etc.

(Table names hanging from the ceiling to match college theme. Made it look like a chalkboard by using black cardstock and white paint pen and them laminating the cut design! We hung the signs with burlap ribbon and clothes pins.)

("Jitter Glitter" for scholars to put under their pillow before the first day of kindergarten!)

(Door décor, Texas Tech theme with facts about Tech in the leaves of the Tech Tulip garden!)

 

(Not pictured ideas: A garment rack with hangers- you can hang your anchor charts on the hangers and then hang the hangers from the wall with tacks! This has been a super easy and quick way to grab what you need! Oriental trading also has amazing table crates and matching baskets for tables so they can have matching bins and matching baskets to turn in their work! For objectives you can frame a colored piece of paper and write the objectives on the frames with dry erase marker!)

KSS 2014

LDW!?…which means I finally have time to update the blog! As I sit at the same exact airport restaurant (literally, in the same seat) that I sat at a year ago today, it suddenly dawns upon me how much can change in a year. Last year this time I was in my third week of teaching ever, still figuring out this Texas thing y’all. Here I am in my second year watching my former kindergartners move up to first grade. Entering into my second year, I definitely thought I had a few things under my belt. That was until the first day of school when I asked my scholars to stand up if they were sitting on a “green” dot and they all looked at me and smiled and not one of them moved. Then I remembered, oh right… I actually have to teach you the colors first!

KIPP Destiny is now in its second year and we have welcomed several new staff members and teachers (some of the most unbelievably talented and dedicated people I’ve had the pleasure to work with) to join us as we roll out K AND first grade this year! I am very thankful to be with the same co-teacher that I worked with last year. We have such an amazing partnership. The kind where you finish each other’s sentences and push each other to grow more than you ever thought possible.

Our KDE team attended KIPP School Summit this summer in Houston, Texas to celebrate KIPP’s 20^th Anniversary. I attended a few days early for the Literacy for Everyone workshop training, which I am excited to help launch at our school this year. KSS had several amazing sessions to inspire teachers and build their national network with “Kippsters” across the nation. I attended one in particular that has transformed my entire outlook on teaching and was quite possibly the best professional development session I’ve ever attended. A psychiatrist, who had research backed data stated that we should be looking at behavior issues in the same lens as learning disorders. Children living in poverty often have toxic stress which affects the actual development of the brain. He stated that they often lack skills that enable them to problem solve and self regulate. It is our job as educators to not only develop our students academically but socially, and by building our scholars’ skill sets, we can make the difference. Between attending this session and partnering with Momentous Institute this year, I am very excited to have a proactive approach with my scholars that suffer from toxic stress.

At KSS, there was an amazing Gala to celebrate 20 years of KIPP. While rumors spread that Beyoncé and Oprah would be present, they didn’t end up making an appearance. However, Mary J. Blidge and Rapper Common performed and Michelle Obama sent in a video to KIPP to thank all of the teachers! The most inspiring part of the event was seeing the KIPP promotion video with OUR very own KIPP Destiny scholars! I nearly broke out in tears seeing them up on the big screen in front of the KIPP national network. At the gala they also had the original KIPP class (from 20 years ago) come up to the stage. Many of them are now mothers, fathers, professionals and you bet… college graduates!

(Opening ceremony of KSS)

 

(The original "Kippsters" from 20 years ago)

(Michelle Obama)