A Fair Shot

As my children prepare for pre-k graduation and the move to kindergarten, I cannot help but wonder about their futures.  Will Karen become a doctor?  Will Awana have the chance to choose between being a ballerina or a doctor?  Will Aniyah’s behavior regress and threaten her academic progress?

I have worked to introduce school to my class as an exciting and fun place where they can make friends, learn, and be successful.  Anecdotal evidence and various forms of assessments suggest that my students have already started to realize their potential and are on the path toward high achievement in school and beyond.  Parents’ strong attendance at our class events and interest in enriching their child’s learning over the summer also bode well for my students’ academic prospects.

Yet my students still have many years during which their attitudes toward school, themselves, and their peers could change for the worse.  Most of them will continue to live in unsafe neighborhoods and struggling school districts.  The research showing that students in inner city schools who have had high-quality pre-k do better than those who have not gives me hope.  I know that my instruction in the classroom and the active support of family members during this critical stage in children’s development will have life-long benefits.  I also believe innovative changes are occurring in the K-12 system, many of them spearheaded by my fellow Teach For America alums.  But, on an individual level, it is still hard to predict how high each child in my class will build on the pre-k foundation he or she gained this year.

My time in the classroom has been, above all, about providing the kinds of opportunities for my students that they deserve.  The playing field is not level, even for three and four year olds.  High-quality pre-k teachers alone cannot ensure that a child won’t face educational and societal inequities down the road, but the vibrant and challenging learning environments we provide are the first step toward giving all children an equal chance at success.

Coping with the Bad Days

Like adults, pre-k students have good days and bad days.  How we as teachers deal with the latter can significantly impact our relationships with individual students, their academic and social growth, and our overall classroom culture.

Just as we differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students, we must also individualize our approach to motivating them.  Karen, though upbeat and highly participatory throughout the day, periodically comes to school in tears, clinging to her grandmother.  She is quite comfortable using writing and drawing as a creative outlet, so  I suggest that she write a note or paint a picture for her grandmother during choice time.  This helps her remain connected even when she cannot be with her family.

Her grandmother and I have also worked on stressing responsibility with Karen.  I thank all of my students for being responsible when they correctly follow our morning routine as they enter.  Karen’s grandmother and I use that same terminology when we are trying to stop her from crying.  This process usually takes a few minutes.  She then calmly puts away her belongings, washes her hands, and is eating breakfast with her friends in no time.

Awana occasionally comes in sobbing and lethargic, particularly if she has been absent or we are returning from the weekend.  If she says anything, it’s usually a very quiet, “I want to go home.”  Her mother is not nearly as present or supportive as Karen’s grandmother, nor does she use writing and art in the same way as Karen.  She does, however, respond well to good old-fashioned hugs.  I usually ask her how she feels, let her know how I would feel, remind her of our classroom routines, give her a hug, and send her on her way to “have fun and learn with her friends.”  Kevin or David sometimes chime in with their own hugs and a “We missed you when you were out, Awana.”

Aniyah often arrives late and upset about something that happened with her brother on her way to school.  Despite our daily “fresh start,” she sometimes carries over some baggage from behavioral problems the day before.  I am quite familiar with her affinity towards cheer leading and use this knowledge to motivate her.  I often greet her with a cheer to her name or ask her to help me out with a cheer for one of her friends.

Understanding and effectively addressing mood fluctuations is an important part of my job, and through this process my students gain self-confidence and the trust in me they need to be engaged members of the classroom community.  When we as teachers succeed in this role, disruptions to the class are minimized and children are less likely to use negative behavior to get attention.

Becoming Social: Karen's Journey into our Community

Karen's grandmother told me from day one that she was concerned about her granddaughter's social skills.  She had never been to school before and spent most of her time around adults: uncles, grandparents, and cousins.  Karen already excelled in basic literacy and math skills after working with her great grandmother, a retired school teacher, one-on-one for the past year.  Her transformation into a highly sociable member of our classroom community highlights the benefits of pre-k, even for those children who can attain academic readiness at home.

Karen's experiences made her quite focused on reading, writing, and interacting with Ms. Morrison and me in the fall.  She chose to read in the Library, play with Table Toys, or paint by herself during Choice Time.  Like David she was quite hesitant to join her fellow four year olds in more social areas such as Dramatic Play and Blocks.  Yet she listened to and comprehended stories read on the rug, could write her name, and was starting to make connections between letters and their sounds.  While I kept challenging her with her academics, I knew the real challenge for Karen would be developing relationships with her peers.

I exposed Karen to the same community building lessons as David.  But whole group songs about our friends and puppet role plays did not motivate Karen to socialize with her friends.  She would cheer on her friends and participate in role plays at the rug, but then continue to play on her own during choice time.  I needed to use a more proactive and involved approach that both reflected Karen's current comfort level and built on that comfort level to further her social development.

Karen gravitated toward and listened to me because I was an adult.  So, I invited her to play with me and then suggested we either join her peers or invite them to play with us.  She agreed and, over time, discovered how much fun her friends could be!  I remember her laughing with Samar in the Discovery Area while they tested magnets with various materials.  She even started problem solving independently with her friends in December.

Karen has come a long way since September.  Just this week, she chose to go to Dramatic Play and was soon taking her friends' orders at our pretend restaurant.  She and her friends joked about changing their names in the Sand Area last month.  She still sometimes prefers "alone time," like when she became adamant about separating the seal and the alligator in the Water Area so the seal would be safe, as shown in the picture.  Yet she frequently experiences the very social interactions that will help her build and nurture relationships for years to come.

A New Year: Pre-K 114's Resolutions for 2007

In my classroom, setting and working tirelessly toward goals are crucial to our overarching theme of going from “good to great.”  I set goals for my students, use data to assess our progress toward those goals, and design lessons based on those analyses.  Likewise, I aim to instill in my students the importance of reflecting about areas in which we can improve and addressing those areas in order to grow as learners.  I also want to invest families in this process in order to ensure that a goal oriented mindset stays with my students after they graduate from pre-k.   

As part of our celebration of the New Year, we made resolutions with our families.  Each student received a note and blank resolution card the first day back last week.  Students returned the cards after coming up with a resolution with family members at home. 

2007 New Years Resolutions

Tyrone and his mother:
Our goal is to read more words and count more numbers. 

David and his mother:
Our goal is to read two books every night and find more words and letters.

Sierra and her family:
As a family our goal is to spend more time reading and sharing our thoughts.

Derrell and his mother:
Our goal is to improve Derrell’s writing of letters.

Tyrique and his mother:
Our goal is to strive for the best together.

Awana and her mother:
Our goal is to identify numbers and the alphabet and to work on writing Awana’s first and last name.

Karen and her grandmother:
Our goal is to read one new book a night and write down two new words out of the book. 

Fuquan and his mother:
Our goal is to read a book every night. 

Kevin and his grandmother:
Our goal is to help Kevin read a book until he understands how to read alone.

Jeffrey and his mother:
Our goal is to learn how to tie our shoelaces. 

Ravon, his mother, and father:
Our goal is to sing more songs together such as “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Not Your Grandmother's Scantron: Assessments in a Pre-k Classroom

The first years of school are far too critical to waste time on ineffective strategies. Accountability in pre-kindergarten programs is therefore vital to the academic and social growth of our youngest learners.

The word "accountability" may conjure images of standardized exams and hours of tedious test prep—not exactly what we would deem appropriate for a four year old. So what do assessments and accountability look like in a pre-k classroom? Well, despite the obvious attraction of handing a multiple choice test with fifty rows of neatly curved "a to e" oval bubbles to a four year old, the reality is that assessment in pre-k just isn't that easy. Yet that doesn't mean accountability in pre-k is or has to be non-existent.

Four year olds don't always show you what they know. Their moods, interests, and developmental stage can affect their performance on a day to day basis. And if they do demonstrate growth in a particular skill area, they certainly do not all do it in the same way like drawing a picture or responding to questions orally. But if you watch and interact with them everyday, all day, while taking anecdotes and collecting work samples, you can have the data needed to chart growth, design properly differentiated lessons that meet the needs of all learners, and hold programs accountable. My students' words, actions, drawings, and singing are my "a, b, c, d, and e" answers.

Take Tanasia, for example. For the first two months of school she spent the majority of her day either bawling and asking, over and over, "When is my mommy coming?" or in a state of total silence. Our one-on-one interactions often incited desperate pleas for her mother. Then, in early October I began to observe her making connections between the print around her and her friends' names during choice time. That is when I knew not only that she was starting to adjust and build relationships, but that she was picking up on basic literacy skills. She would point to letters on labels in Dramatic Play and say to her friend Karen, "Look, it's the K like in your name." If I confronted her with a barrage of letter identification questions, she would clam up and start to cry. I began to address more and more of those skills during choice time where she felt increasingly comfortable.

One of my students last year struggled with letter identification but masterfully used movement to act out stories or create his own. My extensive anecdotal notes reflected these weaknesses and strengths. I consequently decided to address the latter with the former by working with him one-on-one to create movements for each letter. We waddled like penguins for the letter "P," made elephant noises with a long trunk for the letter "E," and so on. I recently met up with him down the hall in his kindergarten class, at which point he pointed out a letter and made the movement we had devised.

My recent analysis of the anecdotal notes revealed that Kevin (aka the "anti-sharer") is a visual learner. Stay tuned for a post focusing on how my aide and I teach the fairness of sharing using a visual approach that puts him in charge.

Making Peace

Karen and Tyrique had a breakthrough today. When I came to the rug after breakfast time, they and two other students were excited about the latest edition of a nature magazine. I responded by complimenting their enthusiasm and slipping in a little vocabulary expansion: "I feel so elated to see you all getting excited about a book!"

The honeymoon did not last long. As I walked away to greet a latecomer, I noticed some of the excitement on the rug was turning into an aggressive and loud conflict over who would turn the pages. Camp David was not available at the moment, but we managed to devise a three stage solution through informal talks on the rug.

1. Two of them would read the magazine for a few minutes while taking turns to turn each page;
2. The first two would then peacefully hand the magazine off to the other two with Ms. Pappas facilitating the transition; and,
3. The other two would read the magazine on their own while taking turns to turn each page.

Through a fair "Ini-mini" random selection process, Karen and Tyrique were chosen as the first two to read the highly coveted publication.

Well, mornings are a busy time, with math routines, morning announcements, newspaper letter hunts, and some anecdote collection before circle time. Sometimes Ms. Pappas forgets to go back to situations like the "Book Taking Turns Agreement." Today, however, my forgetfulness was not a problem. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Karen and Tyrique walk over to the other two students, give them the book, and say, "Here you go. It's your turn now."

At that sight, I definitely felt elation. I quickly acknowledged their success by exclaiming, "Wow. I am so proud of Karen and Tyrique for being such great friends. I am looking out for you for purple." Sure enough, they continued to cooperate for the rest of the day and were both put on purple, the highest honor on our behavior card system. If only international diplomacy were this simple.

Class, Say "Hello" to Our Special Guest... the Blogosphere

Welcome to Inside Pre-K and thanks for visiting! On this blog, you can read about what's going on, day to day, in a real pre-kindergarten classroom, namely my own. I'll be your host/blogger, Sophia (a.k.a. Ms. Pappas). You can learn a lot about me here, but today I want to introduce you to a few of the 14 amazing four year olds in my class this year. You'll soon meet them all. (Note: Their names have been changed to protect their privacy and security.)

• Tyrone - or Doctor Smith, as we call him in Dramatic Play - has a strong foundation in basic literacy knowledge, but he was not very invested in the class at the beginning of the year. His attention span was shorter than most of the children during circle time, and he was often sitting and looking around the room, not participating with the other children or listening to me. He is showing improvement, though, and has since responded positively to activities like singing songs about his classmates and more hands-on tasks.
• Kevin came to school with a strong math and literacy foundation. He picks up on new academic concepts quickly and constantly participates in class activities. Socially, however, he has struggled and frequently cries when he does not get picked for something or has to wait his turn. He is the only child in his household, which may account for some of the difficulties.
• Karen arrived in my class with a strong academic foundation, but until coming to school she did not have much contact with other children. She had been only around adults for most of her early years and initially displayed a hesitance to interact with the other children. From day one, she has followed directions and been focused and actively engaged in whole group activities. She has made real progress since September in smaller group interaction and now frequently reads, shares, and plays with her classmates.

I also am fortunate to have a teacher's aide, Ms. Morrison, who has been working with young learners for more than 20 years. Her experience is very helpful to me, and so is yours. Whether you're an educator by profession, a child's first teacher (a.k.a. a parent/guardian), or just curious about pre-k, I hope you will comment on this blog and tell me and other readers your thoughts and questions about pre-k.