Never A Dull Day In The Elementary Classroom

One important lesson which I have learned from being in my field experience classroom every Thursday and Friday of this semester is that as a teacher, one should always be prepared to think on one's feet. This particular lesson was made clear to me this past Thursday when I was at J.J. Harris Elementary School with my first grade students.

On Thursday, the day seemed to be proceeding rather normally until recess came around the corner. Because the school had been on a soft lock down since the beginning of the week, Thursday was the first day of the week that the students were actually allowed to have recess outside on the playground. While my mentor teacher went to retrieve her keys from the classroom which would allow us to re-enter the building from the playground area, my student teacher and I led the students out to recess. As my student teacher and I sat down on the bench and watched the children disperse in excitement at being able to play outside, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Oh, how we had no idea of what was about to occur. Five minutes into recess, we saw about half of our students begin to make their way towards us in a type of huddle. While we initially could not see anything, as the students came closer and began to open up their huddle to form a line, we saw that the student which was in the middle of the line was leaning on two of his peers, blood dripping from his head. The student, whom I will refer to as Otto, had a deep gash on the side of his forehead and was bleeding rather consistently. Shocked, my student teacher and I immediately looked at each other in panic and quickly decided that she would take Otto to the clinic while I would supervise the rest of the class for the remainder of their recess. While I looked after the rest of the class, my student teacher escorted Otto to the clinic located in the front office as fast as she could before she ran to get a hold of my mentor teacher. I was informed later on that the bleeding had increased so much that the front office had to call the paramedics to come to the school. After I had taken the rest of the class to specials, I met my mentor teacher and student teacher in the front office right as the paramedics arrived at the school. After a quick look at Otto's head, the paramedics decided that he needed to be taken to the hospital for stitches. Due to the fact that the front office could not get a hold of Otto's parents, my mentor teacher and the principal decided to follow the ambulance to the hospital. Because of this sudden change in events, my student teacher, the paraprofessional, and I were left in charge of the remaining students. Once we picked up the students from specials and returned to our classroom, my student teacher decided that we would have the students write cards to Otto. I felt that this was an amazing decision being that it was obvious that Otto's incident was on the student's minds, as well as the minds of all the adults in the classroom, and attempting to continue previously planned lessons and ignore the fact that such a turn of events had occurred would have been futile and fruitless. Once the school bell had rung and the students had left to go home, my mentor teacher returned with news that Otto had gotten 11 stitches and had to undergo a CAT scan but had been laughing and smiling after everything had finished. As you can tell, to say that it was a day of surprises and chaos would be an understatement.

To conclude, the morale of the story which I learned from the situation which passed on Thursday is this: be flexible, be ready to adapt to new situations, and be prepared to think on your feet at all times. The fact is that there really never is a dull day in the elementary classroom.

Preparing for Writing Workshop and Having a Year-Long Plan

"Writing workshops need to be predictable places so that wonderful, unpredictable things can happen in them. Setting up the management structures and routines buys us quality teaching time for later" (Ray, 2001, p. 130).

I love the fact that the authors included this quote at the very beginning of this chapter because I feel that the word "classrooms" could be substituted in for the phrase "writing workshops" and the quote would still hold true. In order for amazing revelations and learning to occur, teachers need to invest time at the beginning of the year making the classroom and each period of the day (including the period for writing workshop) a predictable place through setting up routines. If teachers set up the management structures and routines early on in the year, before any type of academic instruction, less time will have to be spent on re-explaining directions and expectations later on when academic instruction should be taking precedence. In our EDEC 4030 class, we have also discussed that the teacher should expect to dedicate at least a week to teaching students rules, routines, and expectations so that they are aware of what they are expected to do during each period of the day with the materials provided them. While I feel that this is a great idea and could result in an enormous pay off, I have a hard time imagining having at least a whole week's worth of material relating to management structures and routines. However, I feel that maybe, when my first week as a teacher actually comes, I will find that I have more material in regards to rules and procedures than that which I am able to teach in just a week's worth of time.

I found it particularly interesting that some teachers are beginning to include a two-week genre study of testing in the upper grades to their year-long plans for writing workshop. I personally think that this is an ingenious idea because it allows students to understand how they are to deal with issues that result from having to take a writing test which may not regularly arise during the writing workshop. By spending some time conducting a genre study of testing, teachers will be able to adequately prepare their students for the test without having to teach to the test. However, my question is this: would younger grades benefit from such a genre study of testing as well or should such a genre study be saved for those grades in which standardized writing tests are usually administered?

Ray, K.W. with Laminack, L.L. (2001). The writing workshop: Working through the hard parts (and they’re all hard parts). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.