Dear students,
When you walk into my classroom on the first day, you are so new to school. Some of you may have gone to pre-school or Young 5’s, so you have an idea of what school is all about. Others of you are stepping foot into a school for the very first time. You are nervous. You are excited. You don’t know what to expect. Let me tell you a secret - I am feeling the exact same way. As I am writing this letter, I am a brand new teacher. Just like you, I have an idea of what Kindergarten is all about, but I have never done this before. I am learning and growing right along with you. There will be times throughout the year when I will ask too much of you because I forget how many experiences you have not yet had. There will be other times when I don’t challenge you enough because I underestimate the experiences that you have had. I will not be perfect, and I am not expecting you to be either. All I ask is that you try your best every day, and I promise to do the same. I want to tell you a story about how I became a teacher, and I am going to start all the way from the beginning. When I was your age, school was easy for me. I could read, I could write, I could count, and when my teacher taught me something new, I understood it right away. As I got older, school continued to be easy. Things came naturally to me, and I didn’t have to work very hard. I loved school and I thought I was so smart! Then, my first year in high school, I took a U.S. History class. This class was not easy, and I did not understand everything right away. I thought that I wasn’t smart anymore. I hated it! The next year, I was able to choose if I wanted to do another hard history class or if I wanted to do the easier one. I was afraid of not feeling smart again, so I chose the easier one. I kept doing this all the way through high school – I chose to learn about the things that I knew I would be good at, and I avoided the things that I thought would be too hard. Finally, when I was in college, I learned about something called “growth mindset” and “fixed mindset.” Having a growth mindset means that you like to take on challenges. In fact, you love a challenge because it is a chance to grow your brain! You know that if something is hard, it just means that you need to keep practicing, or maybe try a new strategy. You don’t expect to be perfect the first time, and you are okay with that. Having a fixed mindset, like I had, means that challenges scare you. When things are hard, it makes you feel like you are not smart or talented. It makes you want to give up and not try anymore. Why am I telling you this? Well, when I was learning about growth mindset, I thought it was very important - so important that I wrote a huge paper on it to show people why we need to have growth mindset in our classrooms. Now, my goal is to help you develop your growth mindset. While you are my student, I will never tell you that you are smart because you did a good job on something. Instead, I will tell you that you are doing a great job of using your strategies, or that I can see how hard you are working to improve. I want to help you see that learning is a process. I will celebrate every small victory with you, but I will also challenge you to push yourself just a little bit farther. Sometimes, the things we are learning will be very hard for you. When this happens, I will give you all the encouragement in the world and help support you through the process. I want you to know that doing hard things is a part of life, and that we cannot give up without trying. When you walk into my classroom, I promise to celebrate every single one of you. Sometimes we might be a very diverse group, and sometimes we might not be. But no matter what, we all have special parts of us that make us who we are. We all come from different families, who hold different values, and we all need different things. Just like when some students in our class receive support from other teachers and you ask "why don't I go with that teacher?" I explain to you that different learners need different things. It doesn't make it fair or unfair, its just different. If you come from a family who needs more support, I promise to give it to you. When students began learning from home this year, I learned just how important it is to give them whatever I can to help. Some teachers used their energy to get frustrated with parents who were not “trying”, but I don’t believe that the adults in your life would be doing any less than their best to care for you. If there is anything that I can ever do to help you and your caregivers, I promise to do it. I will teach you to respect people who are different than you. We will read stories and watch videos that show us how other people live and teach us about new ideas that we have not experienced yet. In our classroom, we will learn to be kind to each other and to talk about things that are hard to talk about. In my class this year, we had a lot of students who were curious about our presidential election. This year was a particularly big one because there was a lot going on in our country and people were very upset. My students had ideas about who they liked and why, and they were eager to share those ideas. Even though it would be easy for me to ignore the comments and pretend I didn’t hear them, I decided to turn it into a learning experience. We sat down and talked about what the election was about, who was running, and why people liked each candidate. We talked about how lots of people were angry and upset at the idea of their candidate not winning, and we learned that it is okay if we don’t agree with the outcome. I learned not to shy away from difficult things, but instead to be honest with my students and to address their concerns. When you are my student, we will learn that it is okay to disagree, and we will learn how to kindly tell people when we do. We will learn that it is important to stick up for people when we see that they are being treated unfairly. We will love each other and we will work together to make our classroom a place where everybody can feel safe and loved. All of these skills are things that I hope will stick with you for the rest of your life. They are skills that can help you change the world if you use them to be brave and bold. In my classroom, I promise to let you tell your stories and to let your interests guide our class. I love listening to you talk with each other about the things that are important to you, like your love of dinosaurs and the fact that your dog ate your breakfast before school. You may only be 5 years old, but you have already experienced so much in life, and each new thing is so exciting. You are constantly discovering things. My favorite thing about kids like you is how curious you are about your world because we can learn so much from just playing and exploring. I remember being your age. My favorite thing to do was any activity where I had no rulesI love listening to you play together on the playground and make up games like “dog walker”, where you were a group of friends who walked dogs all day, or “Wild Kratts”, where you pretended that you were the Kratt brothers on a mission to save animals. These experiences might not look like you are learning, but you really are getting so much out of it. You are developing your speaking and listening skills, learning to cooperate, and finding your own voice. It makes me sad that we don’t have very much time in our day for playing, so instead I will find ways to let you play while you are learning, even if this means I have to get a little creative about how our lessons are meeting state standards. In order to be the best teacher I can be for you, I will try my hardest to stay up to date on new ways to teach you. The one that I am focusing on the most now is how we use technology in our classroom. I recently took a class on using technology in classrooms, and I learned so much from it. I learned how to decide what tools are the best for what I am trying to teach you, so that I don’t use technology in the wrong way. I really focused on this while we were doing remote learning this year. We had to spend lots of time on our iPads between live meetings and learning apps that we used almost daily. Even though this was way more technology that I would use in a normal year, it gave me a lot of ideas for when we return to “normal”. One of my favorite things that we did this year was when we shared our writing pieces with our parents on our class Seesaw app. I could feel your excitement as you set up your iPads all around the room to record. You introduced your book and as you read it to your parents, I could see you beaming with pride. You came back to school the next day and told me that you watched your video at home with your families and you were so happy. Experiences like this remind me that when technology is used correctly, it really can make some of our school experiences better. Trying to define my own personal curriculum right now is hard to do, so I will just be honest with you. If you are my student right now, know that I am trying my best to give you everything you need to be successful. I try to give you chances to talk and play and feel like things are “normal” in a time when they are very, very, not normal. I hope that you feel loved and cared for in my class. I hope that you don’t mind when I forget to do part of the math warmup, or when we are late to recess because I didn’t manage our time well enough. Please remember that I am still getting used to Kindergarten, just like you. Thank you for loving me and being excited to come to school each day, even when school is on the computer. If you are my future student, I hope that it is obvious to you and your families that I have learned a lot and gained confidence from where I am today. I hope that I still have the same energy and passion that I do now, and that you can feel it. In fact, I hope that added confidence will give me even more energy to share with you! I will try my best from now until then to refine my skills and to make small improvements each year I hope with each year, you get the new, best version of me as a teacher. If you are a past student, I want to thank you. Thank for you for showing me that there are so many different types of learners, and for challenging me to try to reach every one of you. Thank you for allowing me to make mistakes and to learn from them to become better for both you and for my future students. Thank you for laughing with me and reminding me of all the great parts about teaching young minds like yours. Thank you for growing with me. I do not know everything about teaching you, and I’m not sure that I ever will. But I promise to try my hardest to be what you need me to be. Sincerely, Ms. Fraeyman
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I was in the midst of student teaching when the Coronavirus Pandemic began, forcing schools around the world to abruptly switch to remote learning. The principal that I was working under compared this pandemic to 9/11, predicting that just how airport security drastically changed after 9/11, the way we learn and teach will drastically change after this pandemic is over. We will likely have a “new normal” in classrooms.
As a first-year teacher, I am now part of this radical change that is occuring. I think that technology absolutely has a place in the classroom, especially given how prevalent it is in our daily lives. Choosing to ignore technology and sticking to the “traditional ways” of teaching is a disservice to students because it does not accurately reflect the world they are living in. Our students are surrounded by video games, smart phones, tablets, and other pieces of technology all the time. Even in Kindergarten, I hear my students talking about video games like Minecraft (not only for fun, but also making connections to the content we are learning, or using the game as a writing topic). Their future careers will involve technology of some kind – technology that may not have even been invented yet. However, integrating technology just for the sake of being relevant is not going to be beneficial. In my other grad class this semester, we took a look at the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Framework, which was published in 2006 by Dr. Matthew Koehler and Dr. Prunya Mishra. This framework outlines the knowledge that teachers must have in order to use technology in a successful, productive way. Just like with any good planning, teachers have to think about what their end goal is for their lesson, and then determine if the technology they plan to use is the best tool to help them achieve that end goal. The same can be said for integrating pop culture into the classroom. Teaching content using topics that students can relate to will, of course, increase engagement. Kids get excited to talk about the things that interest them! It will also help students transfer their knowledge and apply it outside of the classroom, which is the goal of good teaching. However, fitting pop culture references in wherever you can, with no real purpose or end goal, is not beneficial. If it takes away from the end goal of the lesson or unit, it shouldn’t be done. I find myself using the TPACK framework a lot in my own teaching, especially given the ready access to technology that my students and I have. Our district is a 1:1 technology district, and has been for several years. We have an abundance of apps that we can use for reading, math, science, coding, drawing – the list goes on. However, I am wary of using these apps just for the sake of using them, especially with my young Kindergarteners. I love letting students use RAZ Kids and Epic to listen to books on their iPads so that they can read above their independent level, but these apps don’t reinforce concepts of print in the same way as paper books. Our math app, IXL, provides great targeted practice with immediate feedback, but it does not provide the opportunity for exploration or the use of manipulatives. When the pandemic ends and we can all safely return to our classrooms, I think a lot of teachers will feel comfortable integrating technology into their everyday classrooms. I hope that they are intentional about how they are doing it and we don’t begin to see an overuse of digital tools. I also worry about how technology will further highlight the inequalities we see in schools. Even though my district provides devices, not every student has reliable internet access. During our periods of remote learning, it has been a battle connecting with these students and trying to get them the support that they need. If schools begin to rely on technology more and more after the pandemic, how do we ensure that we are doing so in a fair and equitable way? If a district has the funding to provide 1:1 devices, that is fantastic, but do they have the funding to also provide students with hotspots if they need to use the technology at home? And what about the school districts that don't have the funding to provide devices to their students? How can we keep education relevant and up-to-date without causing even wider gaps between school districts and individual students based on socio-economic status?
The main idea that I pulled from the reading is that the most valuable research is that which is done by “practicing what you preach.” The notion that researchers operate separately from policy makers and practitioners is problematic because it does not allow for research and real-world application to be combined. Ideas that seem good in theory will not always play out. Likewise, teachers who are actually practicing the theories can become wary of what researchers tell them will work in the classroom. This creates a distrust and a resistance to using new research in the classroom. A quote that I found particularly interesting was that “Teachers tend to see their action research as a form of professional development leading to school improvement but do not appreciate the need to raise their own capacity to do research and engage in quality theorizing…” As I read this, I was both appreciative of the idea and took issue with it. I was appreciative because I do wholeheartedly believe that teachers often do not give themselves enough credit for the work that they do on a regular basis to improve their practice. I think that if more teachers were willing to share their knowledge with others, both in their field and outside of the profession, teaching could become a well-respected profession that is driven by the teachers themselves. The knowledge being passed around would be cultivated by people who have used it in practice and can offer advice and insight in applying it to other settings. However, I took issue with this idea because of the same points that had been brought up earlier in the article. If teachers were to take their own action research and attempt to do something with it, who is to say that they would be taken seriously. The research that gets published is often done by people who hold a PhD, which is a degree that not very many teachers hold. Would it even be worth it for teachers to begin theorizing about their work? Or are they better off keeping it to themselves and their community so that it can be taken seriously and enacted immediately. As I begin to reflect on my own educational theory, I plan to take a step back and look at my previous work as if I were an outsider. As a brand new teacher who is still finding myself in the profession, I often get caught up in what I am doing and how I am enacting curriculum and instruction in my classroom. Every idea that I see or conversation I have with a colleague, I tie back to myself and my own practice. While being self-reflective in such a deeply personal way is good, I think it is equally important to be able to remove myself from the picture and take an objective look at what I am doing. I know that my educational theory is not set quite yet, and it will grow and change and I develop as an educator. By looking at my writings and my practice through an objective lens, I will be able to identify a starting point from which I can project myself forward. Throughout my entire life, I have heard my parents tell stories about coming home from school or waking up in the summer and immediately leaving to be outside to play. Their only limitation was “be back when the street lights come on!” When I was growing up, there was less freedom that was afforded to us. I still spent a majority of my time outside, playing and exploring in my backyard and in my friends’ backyards. I have great memories of my summers as a child, where the only time I was inside was if I scraped my knee and needed to have it cleaned out. We would even play outside in the rain as long as there was no thunder or lightning. I used to get so excited for a downpour so that I could take my popsicle stick to the curb and send it “down the river” that was caused by rainwater running to the street drains. However, in all of these fond memories, I was limited to staying near my house where my parents could keep an eye on me. I didn’t have the complete freedom that my parents had when they were young. Today, I feel like children have even less freedom than what I had – and less exposure to nature. Parents have become more and more protective, and as a result, children have had less opportunity to independently explore their world.
Why is exploring and playing outside so important? The interesting thing about playing in nature is that there is nothing found there that is really intended for play. Items like sticks, trees, bugs, dirt, puddles, grass – none of these have the flashy characteristics of manufactured toys. Instead, they allow us to be curious, use our imagination, and be a part of something that seems nearly endless. I think that is the beautiful part about nature and is what makes it so therapeutic. We are able to use our time in nature however we need it, exploring both our world and ourselves with no limitations. In the article by Kissling and Bell, they discuss how there is a lack of teaching on how humans are connected to the earth and the environment. Thinking back to my own high school education, I agree with their beliefs. I cannot recall any class or curriculum that really focused on how humans and the environment interact. Instead, my social studies education focused on people only, which is really only part of the story. I may have learned what natural resources people used, but it wasn’t enough for me to really understand the interaction that was going on between man and nature. Thinking about my own teaching now, I do not think that I really dive into the human-earth connection with my students. I do try to expose them to nature and the earth when I can. We do art projects that incorporate real leaves in the fall, use pumpkin seeds as math manipulatives, and play outside frequently. These things are not building an understanding of how humans and nature interact, but hopefully I am helping my young students build an appreciation for nature that they can carry with them as they grow. Controversial topics like racial tension, gender and sexuality, and stereotypes (to name a few) absolutely have a place in the classroom, and if they are taught correctly, they can yield incredible results. The key to discussing and interacting with these topics is to avoid inserting your own opinion into your teaching. This can be difficult to do because these topics are controversial for a reason - people tend to have strong, differing opinions on them. By keeping your own opinion out of the conversation and simply presenting facts, you allow students to share their own thoughts in a safe way without fear of being “wrong”. I think that the goal of teaching controversial topics should be to expose students to different perspectives, not to change their mind or lead them one way or the other.
I think back to one of my final undergraduate courses, which covered methods for teaching social studies. My professor used gallery walks, Socratic seminar, and individual written response, among other strategies, to allow us the opportunity to share our opinion on topics that were relevant to society. It felt so good to be able to safely debate and defend my ideas amongst my peers. However, there were times when my professor would share her opinion and pick a side during discussion. Whenever that happened and my opinion differed from hers, I felt less willing to share my true thoughts during class. I felt like my ideas were not welcomed and that I was wrong for thinking something different. In order to maintain a safe and welcoming classroom environment, that is something that teachers should try their best to avoid. As somebody who teaches the youngest learners, I wholeheartedly believe in teaching my students to be kind, accepting, and loving members of society. I have no problem introducing them to different cultures, family structures, lifestyles, etc. However, it is not up to me to decide how students respond to the ideas that I present to them. My students are 5 years old, and many of their opinions are formed based off of what they hear the adults in their life say. I am not here to challenge those beliefs and tell a 5 year old that their parents are wrong. My job, is to expose children to something new, or to present an aspect of their own life that is not typically represented in society. I often think back to my undergraduate studies and the countless times that we discussed books being windows and mirrors into society. Books either reflect a student’s own life, or open up their eyes to something new. I think that the teaching of controversial topics should do the same. As teachers, we are not here to “preach” or to “fix society”. We are here to present ideas and help students work through new information. The purpose of school, at its core, is to help children make sense of the world around them, and if we want to do this successfully, we have address the events that are shaping our world. As our society changes and focuses on different issues, so should our topics of conversation on the classroom. As I have explored the question “what is curriculum?” I feel like I have actually gotten further away from reaching an answer. Upon initial thought, I viewed curriculum as the units of study that are taught in schools. Under this definition of sorts, good curriculum is that which teaches students what it intends to teach in an engaging way. However, this makes it difficult to create curriculum that is good for all because different types of students are engaged in different ways. I have even seen this in my own Kindergarten classroom in the first few weeks of school. As we are moving through lessons, some students are thoroughly engaged and some are bored and restless, all at the same time. Does this mean that the curriculum isn’t good, since it is not engaging all students? Or does engagement not matter as long as their test scores are at the desired level?
I have realized that my definition of curriculum was formed around middle-class, general education, elementary aged students (which, consequently, is the population that I typically deal with). There is the argument that is often made that students should be taught more “real world” skills in the classroom - like how to buy a house, how to change a tire, and how to do your taxes. In the past, I held the belief that these skills should be taught at home and should not fall on the school’s list of responsibilities. Schools are busy teaching academic skills, they do not have time to also teach life skills that can be taught elsewhere. This thinking was influenced by the belief that students’ parents were responsible and able to teach those skills. What about the students whose parents work while their children are not in school? What about the parents who don’t possess those skills themselves to be able to pass down? There are so many reasons why children may not be receiving those “life skills” outside of the classroom, and providing those learning opportunities in school would give those children valuable and necessary tools. The true meaning of “curriculum” is the collection of everything that a person has learned. In my opinion, the purpose of schooling should be to help students become productive members of society, which means that students need to be exposed to a wide range of skills and knowledge. This can become difficult when the definition of “productive” varies from person to person. However, I think that this is where the method of teaching comes in to play. Material should be delivered in a way that allows students to explore and develop ideas on their own, walking through every step in the learning process. This will not only teach students the intended material, but it will inadvertently teach students how to learn. if students have a true understanding of how to learn, they will be able to transfer that skill outside of the classroom to explore new topics. In a perfect world, schools would be able to cover it all. They could teach academic content, life skills and vocational skills, while providing students with structure and also allowing students freedom to explore the areas that interest them most. However, with limited classroom time and more demands on what absolutely has to be done in the classroom, there is not room for all of this. This explains why we see new trends in education all the time, and the focus of “good” education changes frequently. Hopefully by the end of a child’s formal schooling career, they have collected a valuable curriculum that will help them contribute to society in a meaningful way (whatever they themselves consider to be meaningful!) As a very recent college graduate (I graduated in April of 2020), I am new to the world of education. My mother is an educator of about 20 years, and she is the one who sparked my passion for teaching. Seeing her love for what she does, year after year, inspired me to follow in her footsteps and begin to make an impact on so many lives.
I received my B.A. in Elementary Education from Oakland University. I am also a graduate of the Honors College at Oakland University, where I presented a thesis on Growth Mindset in the classroom. I now live and work in Romeo, Michigan as both a Kindergarten teacher and a high school dance team coach. Outside of work, I enjoy exercising, spending time with family and friends, and traveling. As I begin to explore the world of education, both through teaching and through the beginning of my graduate work, I have asked myself "what is curriculum and how does it impact education?" At its core, curriculum is what and how students are taught. Curriculum is designed in units that piece together a logical sequence for delivering content. The design is research based, and can vary greatly depending on who created it. Every curriculum program out there has a slightly different approach to delivering content, and educators have to decide which programs match what - and how - they are intending to teach. Curriculum does change and grow with new trends in education and new social issues that arise. One example of this is the shift from the "Daily 5" model of language arts instruction, where students had the opportunity to practice multiple skills each day, to the "Workshop" model, where students are focused on one skill at a time. Another, more in depth, example is the increased focus on diversity and inclusion in the classroom. Curriculum creators have to now place more focus on who their material is catering to and who is being represented through the material, ensuring that there is a wide variety of communities and cultures present. As we continue to explore the topic of curriculum throughout this course, I am excited to see how my views change. I can't wait to dive deeper into these topics! |
AuthorI am a graduate student at Michigan State University and a first-year Kindergarten teacher. Archives
December 2020
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