Last year I switched from 13 years at primary in the same school to Middle School. I knew I was ready for the change because I didn't have as much patience with my second graders and was getting more frustrated then usual. I spent the last month of school and all of last summer flip flopping between being excited and wonder what the heck I had done. I was fine once I started the new year. I think change is good and I was over due, but with young kids I wasn't ready to take the leap before this. Also, I know I can move back to elementary at some point if I want to (there are usually openings), but it could be awhile before I had this opening in Middle School. I teach 6th grade Reading and their are only two positions. Good luck with your decisions. Cindy
-----Original Message----- From: Zey, Melissa [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 9:54 AM To: Special Chat List for "To Understand: New Horizons in ReadingComprehension"; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; mosaic@literacyworkshop.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [MOSAIC] Help, how do you know? Hello. I am currently in a district that is doing some restructuring and there will be an opportunity for building moves in the fall of '09 as new elementary is opened. Staff members are able have a say in their building and grade level. I taught 5th grade in the fall of my student teaching and for a spring long term and really enjoyed the older students. Then, my first official year of teaching was also in 5th grade and it was awful. I had a really tough group and few tools at that point to handle it well. I currently teach 3rd grade and have for many years now. I love third grade. They are independent and yet love school. I have only ever taught in one elementary school. I even did my student teaching in this building. The building is very traditional. After getting my masters a few years ago, I was exposed to balanced literacy. I started teaching that way and have never looked back. I often wonder how things would have been different with that first year of 5th graders if this is how they'd been taught. I am basically the only one in my building that teaches this way, which is why I am looking to change buildings. I have even considered leaving our district. As a whole I think my district is starting to make positive changes toward the balanced literacy approach, but it's certainly not happening in my current buidling. I love third grade, but when I see this opportunity to try to bring the joy of learning back to the older children--to empower them with their own ideas I wonder where I should be. I know this sounds ridiculous, but how do you know what's the right decision? As some of you have decided on career moves (going from teacher to specialist, changing districts, grade levels, etc.), how have you come to make those changes and why? Did you know at the time if it was the right decision? It's so hard to know... it just proves life is all about a leap of faith. Melissa Zey Farmington, MN ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 6/22/2008 8:24 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Understand] Understand Digest, Vol 4, Issue 16 > Maybe, just maybe...there is a strong tie between the 'Fourth grade > slump' > and the age at which we have schooled out all the curiosity of early > childhood... > Jennifer I think this is very possible, Jennifer. One of the things I have battled is the feeling that students already come to me in fifth grade comfortable with the structure of unthinking schooling. They WANT me to just give them answers, to give them papers and more papers, to let the hand-up addicts control the class while the rest doze off into oblivion. Each year I battle this preordained culture and some years I am more successful than others. Understand, I am not blaming teachers here. They are working within the culture. It stretches way beyond the classroom IMHO. I generally start my fifth grade science unit by telling students I would feel very successful as a teacher if I can return them to their 3 year-old selves. They look at me like I am out of my mind and then I talk about how they had a natural curiosity back then that annoyed their parents and caregivers enormously. Usually, someone in the class knows a three-year-old, starts laughing and calling out, "Why? Why? Why?" Then we talk about how why, how, and what if can take us to wonderful learning places. When students ask fabulous and impossible questions in my class, I get very excited. I often have a posting for fabulous questions. If they ask me to answer them, I offer to help them know where to look. It is the start of rebirthing curiosity, but it takes time and patience. Some students will go overboard to begin with. Others will not see the value initially. Some things that I think stand in the way of curiosity in our classrooms are: --ditto on hurrying through curriculum. As Gardner once said, "Coverage is the enemy of understanding." --not listening, really listening, to children--if we are not interested in their observations, however simplistic they may sometimes appear, then they will refrain from sharing them and eventually (in some cases) from thinking about them. --classroom management--people I meet, parents, administrators, other teachers, mistake the quiet classroom for the better classroom. And I do value quiet thought (I love that about reader/writer workshop), I also notice that when you begin to value student thought, they act up more--they can be more argumentative, more passionately loud, more likely to call out thoughts and turn to their neighbor if the wait to share might be too long. These behaviors are not perceived as positive by outside audiences, even though I have come to be quite comfortable with them (much prefer them to a bunch of deadheads who do not care what we are discussing) --remembering to ask students why they think something...so much of curiosity is housed in the "Why" of things. :)Bonita _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
