Like Gary DiBianca, my blogging usually stops during the school year. I want to up my game a little bit here, if only to share the blogs that I write for my school.
Let me preface by noting that I taught mixed levels of high school Russian in a large, extremely diverse public high school for 33 years, as well as non-credit and university Russian classes. Then I moved to a small private school where I have taught every group up through eighth grade, and now teach Spanish from Pre-K through grade 3 (and some college and private Russian). I have loved every level.
For now, what I am considering is how my school walks the Responsive Classroom talk. The school originally chose Responsive Classroom out of many systems because it aligned most closely with the mission of the school. (I learned that during inservice! We also realized that RC has modified itself over time, continuing to improve.) Part of Responsive classroom is that the focus of the first six weeks of school is on building community.
After our first four days of community building during in-service, I appreciate anew how our school follows RC ideas. We start every meeting with a “greet” – a way to say hello to everyone, including one in which a person could get whiplash but is evidently popular with the kids – and a “meet,” during which we consider a question or share an idea. Over the course of four days, we had the option to share slightly increasing amounts of personal information, from what made us curious (and what we did about it) in the previous year, to comfort circles – moving from a center circle to an outer one to share how much in our comfort zone potential actions might be (from talking to colleagues to camping alone, for example).
Part of the Greet and Meet is an activity, so we played the Stuffies game, some relay tic-tac-toe (we were outside in a field), some “mingle to the next person” to answer a question, and others. In between, we discussed our mission, school responses to discipline issues, the schedule, our hopes and dreams for our classes, committees and what DEIb means, and a first discussion about our chosen book: Willie Hensley’s 50 Miles from Tomorrow (highly recommend). The four days went by very quickly, and after each one, I felt as though we had accomplished important missions for our school. I also felt closer to my colleagues. Using Responsive Classroom as a guide for ourselves, we can understand how it feels for students to feel as though they are important members of our groups at school. It’s truly affirming and supporting. I wish that the entire country could follow this system in every organization at every level.
I spent a lot of years in a system where the best training was usually what teachers themselves offered or sought out (and often paid for) on their own time, and where if the regular inservice sessions had valuable information, the force and volume through which it was presented often left me feeling both disrespected and overwhelmed. Now, although I was grumbling to myself about eight days of inservice, I feel that they will have been well-spent, and I’m looking forward to short morning meetings followed by time to collaborate with classroom teachers and get things set up in the school next week. As another former public school teacher pointed out to me, in the past, we would have been in the school on our own time before inservice began to set up our classrooms. This school acknowledges that we need time on our own. Wow. I feel respected, educated, and valued by the administration and my colleagues.