The Beginning of New School Year

The beginning of each school year is such a magical time.  

We see such transformations as entirely bare classrooms (we pack up our entire school each May to make room for an art show) turn in to warm, bright, inviting spaces. 

Because we are a cooperative nursery school, our parents have been and continue to be an integral part of this transition.  They help us unpack the boxes and place the furniture, clean the toys, clear the debris from the playground, plant flowers and fill our kitchen with food, just to scratch the surface.  Then they join us in the classroom each day as one of our assistant teachers.  There is a great deal of adult learning going on as the parents learn the routines of the classroom and how each teacher sets up activities or wants snack prepared.  There are meetings and orientations and committees to join.  

And then it arrives….the first day of the first week.  Children who were tentative about leaving their care givers' side start exploring their new surroundings.  New friendships start forming and old ones are reconnected.  A special relationship begins between child and teacher. 

I am looking forward to a wonderful  school year learning along with and from my new students.  We enjoyed getting to know each other this week while we…

cooked... for real,

 and pretend,

dressed up,

played music,

worked at the work bench,

read,

wrote,

built,

painted,

blew bubbles,

slid

climbed,

counted snack,

explored the sensory table,

graphed,

and so much more. 

Nurturing Your Staff before Welcoming Your Students

This time of year, as teachers, we are very focused on preparing our classrooms and planning wonderful activities and experiences for our students.  In my dual role of being a teacher and the Educational Director, I need to welcome the staff and prepare them for a wonderful year of working together.  Meetings are long and plentiful at the beginning of the year; medical training, procedures, setting goals, etc.  During this time I try to insert as many “perks” and playful times as possible. 

I always present my staff with a little “back to school” gift.  In the past this has ranged from a pretty new notebook, a silly pen, lotion, a flowering plant, a personalized mug for our kitchen and so on.  This year I was stumped for an idea.  We’d had a bit of a rough start with the hurricane affecting our school so I wanted something to make them really feel appreciated.  I ended up giving them this goodie bag with a variety of items in it, each representing a part of the year ahead.  They really enjoyed it and actually told me I should post it on my blog, so here it is….

The words were:

A Goodie Bag to thank you for all that you do for others

and to remind you how special you are to CCNS!

It’s been a rough start to this school year,

    the files are to remind you that rough patches can be smoothed.

You will be passing out many hugs this year; you deserve to receive some too.

The 100 Grand bar represents the fact that you are worth

      so much more than we can pay you!

The mints are to remind you to stay fresh-keep an open mind

      and be available to change.

The magic eraser represents your willingness to take risks

       and learn from mistakes.

The Emergen-C is to remind you the importance of taking care

        of yourself this year-no sick days J

The Luna Bar is for energy!  Keep it up.

The lip gloss is a little nurturing for you because you

        provide so much nurturing for others.

The mask is for pampering.  You work so hard. 

        Take some time to pamper yourself.

The Shout wipes are because life and play are messy! 

         A dirty teacher isn’t always a happy teacher so clean up!

And the lottery ticket is to wish you good luck this year!

The other part of our back to school ritual is to have a little ice breaker activity before our long meeting.  We’ve tried different things over the years, but this year with a new staff member entering our pretty tight knit group, I decided to try and play with some information we didn’t already know about each other, while getting to know our new colleague at the same time.  Now keep in mind that my staff is pretty close and I have gotten to know their personalities quite well (our new staff member is a former parent of an alum), so I could be a bit more outlandish with the questions I chose.  I sent the staff a survey with about 10 questions on it for them to fill out and return; favorite beverage, most embarrassing moment, celebrity crush, favorite art material at our school, ideal job other than the one they have now, sports played in high school, etc.  Then I used their answers to create a bingo board.  We had to walk around and ask yes or no questions to each other. 

If someone answered yes, they could initial the square to which you were referring.  Whoever was able to fill a row, or column or diagonal first¸ won the game, and, of course, a little additional prize.

  It was really entertaining to get to know things about each other that we didn’t know..and some of these women I have worked with for nine years!  It was great fun, got us laughing and smiling and open to tackle to hard work of the day. 

It is serious business preparing a school to open.  But as play advocates, it is important that we nourish the playful adult as well.   I’d love to hear about what is done at your school to playfully welcome the staff.  

Phase 3 Concluding the Project

I realize as I reread my earlier posts that there is so much more detail to this work that I am not writing about; the importance of and methods of engaging children in the question process, how to divide children into interest groups for field work, observational drawings, and so on.   If I covered it all it would be a book, not a blog post.  I am choosing the areas that I have chosen to reflect on the most.  However, I am excited to share this with other educators that are interested, to experiment with it and refine it in my own classroom and continue to learn more as I engage with other colleagues.  I am hoping to share more of this as I post actual project work that will be done with my students as we begin our school year in just a few weeks. 

That said I am particularly proud of my hot tub, so I am going to share some of my Phase 3 experience.

Sharing what has been learned with others enriches the process.  Knowledge can be shared in an infinite number of ways and the beauty of this type of work is that children are given choices.  Throughout the process so much choice is embedded bringing ownership to the learner.  Some of the ways to share findings are drawings, paintings, clay sculptures, rubbings, poems, stories, time lines, Venn diagrams, survey results, models, photographs displays, collage and so many more.  Inviting parents or other classes to see a display of their project work is rewarding and gives children a chance to be the experts and feel the fruit of their hard work. 

The final display is really the story of the process of the learning.  It will include the topic webs, Phase I writings and drawings, field sketches (Phase 2 work), photographs with captions and a variety of representations of the findings such as those mentioned above.  It should tell the story of the process and the learning that occurred along the way. 

In our group we had to negotiate with each other what we were going to display.  We didn’t display all the memory drawings, we chose one.  One person made a graph, another did a drawing and another created an experiment for people to try.  All of the work of each person was not displayed.  Choices are made.  With this approach it needs to be explained that the display portion is not about showing off everything that each person has done, but about using pieces of each person’s work to tell the story of the learning.  As a teacher I think it is very easy to get caught up in feeling that you need to always display something from each child.  This is what often leads to 16 school bus drawings lined up in a row.  This will need parent education as well.  Parents become very accepting when you are able to explain your reasoning and the process to them. 

I became very interested, okay obsessed, with making a working model of the hot tub.  I “borrowed” the ice bucket liner from my hotel room and gathered straws to create the jets.  My first attempt failed miserably sending water all over the conference room.

 But then, my team members offered suggestions and encouragement and praise and I kept going.  Again, this is what I want in my classroom, this sense of community and problem solving and helping one another.  By the time we shared our display, I had a working model of the hot tub, complete with bubbles!

Our group shared our findings and our process with the rest of the attendees answering questions and engaging them in our experiments. It is irrelevant that I now know how to test the PH of a pool, or the correct temperature of a hot tub, or that yes, they do enforce the rules and you should not be drinking a glass of wine in the hot tub…we were proud of our work and excited by the process.  We formed connections with each other and supported each other in the shared content of our project.  We felt the joy of learning.  This is what I want to give my students. 

                  My water feature group with Sylvia Chard and Lillian Katz