Bringing it All Together

It seems that although this month was just as full of learning and discovering as any other it has came and went by very quickly! November focused more on cohesiveness for me as I work in an inclusion classroom with two others, a co-teacher and a para. This month demonstrated the importance of Unity and emphasized that teachers are the most important piece of the Unity Unit! As I work to implement new strategies and theories learned I must pause to understand that all teachers in the classroom must and should be on one accord, especially as I focus on the importance of ‘School Family’. I really enjoyed learning about the importance of Conscious Discipline and the strategies it offered to building the ‘school family’ a term we began using with our unit on Families. As a Pre-K teacher making connections to the home is very important to gaining students’ attention and building relationships. Dr. Bailey states that “it is important that children believe they are meaningful contributors to the school family. Meaningful contributions build self-worth and value within the individual. An internal feeling of self-worth extends outward as kindness, sharing and cooperation.” (Bailey, 2000).

After much hesitation on my part I finally implemented a helper’s chart. Why did I wait so long?!?? These last two weeks of November my students have become the most helpful group I have seen in a while. They remind the designated helper of her/his responsibilities, offer to help if a student helper is absent, and are eager to be assigned a helper. I read this and even listened to  fellow classmates discuss how it worked in the classroom yet I felt that it was too time consuming to try and my students would not be interested. BOY WAS I WRONG!

My school family is now ready for takeoff, well not quite.

 As I have been eager about becoming a better educator and implement new techniques in the classroom I seem to have forgot to maintain the connections between my co-teacher and para. The family unit leaders seem to be on my ‘lows’ more than I would have liked this month. I have learned to use my lows for opportunities to improve therefore I am able to have such perspective. Now that I am gaining new theories, ideologies and strategies to use in the classroom of three (3) teachers I need to learn how to share my thoughts of implementing before I do. My co-teacher and para are great supporters yet I want them to feel just as much a part of the school family as the students and myself. I noticed that my teachers began to ‘drift’; not being as connected to the unit as they were while we worked so diligently to build our school family.

 Through all my readings about school routines, school family, connections, classroom culture, etc. I forgot to keep in mind those I work with to make it successful and understandable from another person’s perspective. Did I seem to shut them out? Did I fail to communicate new ideas, strategies? Where was the drop in communication? All of my readings regard the teacher working alone while I work with two others I feel that I need to re-evaluate the communication among us to maintain the progress of the students we teach because students notice a disconnect much earlier than we realize which comes through in their behavior, good and bad. Moving forward I hope to continue the gains of school family through building better student-teacher relationships as well as teacher-teacher relationships because we all need to feel that we belong and are important!