Off to school I go

Getting really into the new year (and kids haven't even started yet). I even had another job interview yesterday and was offered the position, but I'm going to turn it down and stay with Rural Charter. (It was a preschool teacher job, with future expansion into kindergarten and, probably, other elementary grades as this new school grows into a full private elementary school. Not for me though- I'm a bit too immersed in my mission as a Title 1 teacher- and the pay is half what I make now, so it's not an option anyway. Great to get the offer though.)

So it looks like I'll be the intervention specialist and an instructional coach at Rural Charter. Not sure what exactly this will entail, but it looks like it will be things I've already been doing, like getting the new math standards out to all the teachers, and so on. Very interesting work, and hey- I'm up to 27+ hours a week, which unfortunately still looms large as a worry. I need about 50 hours, but whatever. With some tutoring and possibly an after school intervention deal at Favorite Urban Elementary, I'll be significantly closer to full time this year than last.

Got to get ready for work now. Today is the first meeting for the Title 1 transition team: we're going from Targeted Assistance to Schoolwide this year (as in, 2011-12 will be schoolwide) and have to jump through a ton of hoops along the way. This morning, hoop #1. Bring it on.

Lots of number crunching.... is this teaching?

As a part of my job as Title 1 interventionist, I am also serving as the Title 1 coordinator for the school. This is by no means an official job title. It's just that now I am assembling/writing the school's Targeted Assistance School Plan. Seems that the person who resigned and who I replaced had not really assembled this year's binder of plans, schedules, data, etc that make up this Plan. So now I'm working on it in addition to helping students. Overall I have to admit that I kind of enjoy the work. Not that I'd like to do just this all the time, but it's informative and a good counterpoint to the hands-on work with kids. I think it's good for educators to have some insight into the needs and responsibilities of administrators, kind of like I think everyone should hold at least one service job. Gives you perspective. I'm not an administrator, but working with some of this federal government paperwork does give me a broader perspective on the work I do in the classroom. I just wish more pencil pushers had a chance to see how their work impacts children. It's a good experience overall.

Working on reading and math interventions

Things have gotten underway in my new job. I'm doing small group interventions for reading and math at a rural charter school. The whole school is only about 55 or 60 kids, and my groups are all four or fewer students at a time. The challenge (for now) is streamlining my curriculum. I'm working with five different levels for reading, and using as many different programs! There's a fair amount of prep involved on the front end to get this all figured out, but I feel like I have something coherent and relevant for each group now. The littlest ones are using Touch Phonics to review and incorporate some remedial phonics skills. The next level is using a Sight Words and Syllabication system. The next two levels of intermediate students are reading short high interest nonfiction passages and being tested for comprehension. I think I'll soon be adding Dolch word drills to their work as well. And with the oldest students we're timing their reading speed on short passages, repeating three times per passage, and charting the results on nice little graphs. They seem pleased in spite of themselves to see the improvements they make each time.

This is all a great learning experience for me. I have to deal with such a huge age range (7 to 13) that my classroom management skills are tested daily. But I'm loving the challenge and as I get to know the kids I think I'm doing a better and better job. Tomorrow is an inservice day and they're sending me to a training for Renaissance Learning. I'm looking forward to it because their systems are widely used in our local districts and it will be good to know better how to use them, and because I think the Accelerated Math component could be useful for interventions. Plus it will be nice to sit and learn in that format for a day.

All in all it's going well.

2 jobs = more than twice as busy!

I've worked a week now with the (for now) real schedule. Three days a week I do academic intervention at the rural charter school about a half hour from home and the other two days I'm in my beloved kindergarten class. The new job is solely under Title 1 and has been mostly paperwork and assessments so far. The routine hasn't been quite set yet, so it's still a little hectic. I do feel like I'm learning good things through all the reading tests I've been administering! Each is a one-on-one session with a student and it's giving me a chance to get to know the kids a little and start crafting my strategies for the actual interventions once that really gets started. For example, I'm identifying who needs remedial phonics lessons (mainly 2nd graders) and who needs a fluency oriented curriculum (everyone else). The next challenge is going to be applying pre-approved, research based programs in an engaging way. I like the 1:1 ratio, but it won't stay that way. I'm most concerned about a very reluctant seventh grader who doesn't want to participate in anything. He's a challenge, but most of the other kids are pretty happy to be learning. My kindergarteners are great as always. It feels like coming home to go back in there on my Tuesdays and Thursdays. I really loved being there full time. I'm still adjusting to this new routine! Now I've got to go make up a homework packet for the week. This week we're learning the letter K!

Sometimes hugs aren't enough

A few days ago I was monkeying around with this blog and I added the phrase "Phonics, counting, singing, and hugs in a Title I school" to the sidebar. I had hugs on the list because little people are all the time running up with waist-height hugs. It's sweet, and it's a perk of teaching primary grades. Yesterday I really had to put my hugging skills to the test, though. My little guy who was just moved to a second foster home broke down at the end of the day. It's been a couple of weeks since the move, and he's mostly been just a slightly bouncier version of his normal 5 year old self, but as we were preparing to leave school for the day I noticed him sitting with his chin on his desk, all red in the face. I sort of told the class to talk amongst themselves (they're quite good at that) and called him over. Before I knew it, he was curled up in my lap, sobbing that he missed his sisters (one was moved with him, two stayed behind). All I could do was hold him and whisper to him that it will be OK, that lots of people are on his side and making sure he's taken good care of, and so on. I hugged him like I hug my own daughters when they're sad: a real, solid, I'm not letting go kind of hug. Granted, my kids get upset about things like a skinned knee or a squabble over a toy or frustration over learning subtraction. This little guy has the world on his itty bitty shoulders. The irony is, all his sisters are in our school. It's just hard to pull them out of class to get them together. I'll track down their teachers today and see if we can do something. In the meantime, I'm a good hugger. And I've gotten good (thanks in large part to my husband's influence) at being consistent and reasonably strict with rules. I hope that can help the little guy, as well as the many many others in my class who are in stressful situations. We're a Title I school, and with high poverty tends to come a high level of stress for a lot of people. Sometimes it's heartbreaking, but I'm grateful for the chance to be a spark of positivity (and source of necessary skills and knowledge!) for so many kids.

In other news, I think for Thanksgiving I'll just do a kindergarten version of a Gratitude Tree that my mentor teacher did last year with 6th graders. I'll make some sort of tree image to go on the wall and the kids will give me quotes about things they're grateful for that I'll put on leaves. There. That's done!