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Monday Morning at School

Posted on October 21, 2022 by susanrray

“Today we’re going to write another five-sentence paragraph,” Mrs. K* said.  Her second grade students opened their flip top desks to get pencils.  Mrs. K placed sheets of paper on her students’ desks.

“Julie is sharpening her pencil.  Bill knows to clear his desk of everything except his pencil.  Mary is ready.” 

            Children wiggled and chatted among themselves quietly.  “Who remembers the name of the first sentence of a paragraph?”  Several children shouted, “Topic!” and others echoed in sing-song chants.

            Mrs. K sat at her desk and focused a small camera on paper that projected onto a chalkboard size Smart Board.  “Let’s begin together.”  She wrote and said, “My weekend was _________.  What words could be in the blank?”  She repeated her students’ answers.  “Great. Fun. Happy. Wonderful.”  She wrote ‘great’ in her sentence and then walked around the classroom.

            “Now, we’ll use a transition word. Beth just wrote the word ‘first.’ That’s her transition word and I’ll use it too.”  Mrs. K wrote ‘First, I cooked pizza for Friday night supper.’   “I heard Tom say he didn’t do anything and his weekend was boring.  So, he can fill in the word boring in his topic sentence and what could he write for the second sentence?” 

            Tom’s classmates offered ideas. Mrs. K said, “Tom is writing that he went to bed Friday.  That’s a good detail sentence for his topic sentence.  After everyone puts a period at the end of the second sentence, let’s choose another transition word.”

            Students suggested words: then, after that, next. Mrs. K wrote ‘Then on Saturday, I went to my sons’ soccer games.’ “You write something you did Saturday.”  Again, Mrs. K walked around the classroom whispering to individual students and then she said aloud, “We’ll add one last detail sentence.  What transition words can we use?”  The students were silent.

            “How about another thing I did or finally?” She wrote a sentence and students wrote on their papers. “That’s four sentences.  We’re ready for the concluding sentence.  Is it a detail?” 

            Students responded:  some shook their heads and some shouted, “No!” Mrs. K wrote ‘As you can see my weekend was _______.’  “What’s another word for great?” Mrs. K pointed to her topic sentence and then repeated the words students suggested: fabulous, outstanding, happy. 

            Students wrote and Mrs. K walked around the classroom.  “All right. Let’s draw a picture.” Mrs. K drew a stick person on her paper; a few students laughed.  “Oh, please be kind.  I’m just learning to draw.”

            As a grandparent volunteer, I’d cut out four-inch felt squares for twenty minutes that Monday morning while Mrs. K had guided nineteen students to write paragraphs. I stood from my seat at the back of the classroom and quietly applauded.  Mrs. K grinned and nodded. 

            Mrs. K’s last directions before recess is a quote I’ve saved.  “Take a minute to put things where they belong.  Remember how good that feels?”

I’m thankful for teachers like Mrs. K. Let’s honor them with respect and appreciation.

*Names changed – just because.

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Dropping into a School Classroom

Posted on January 20, 2021 by susanrray

The second-grade students entered their classroom quietly, one at a time.  Their teacher, Mrs. M greeted each child by name and in a happy voice said, “Good morning.”  Some children responded with a wave; some nodded; some replied with words.  Some smiled; some frowned; some appeared too sleepy at 8:15 a.m. to show expression.

            This school day began just like mornings when I greeted students as they came into my classroom at Capshaw Elementary School.  But these children didn’t walk past their teacher.  They were at their homes, and their teacher was in her school classroom, and they came together on a Zoom conference call.

            I’ve wondered about remote learning.  How does it work?  Can young children learn while at home sitting in front of a computer?  Mrs. M, my former teaching colleague, agreed that I could join her Wednesday morning class, or as she said, “Be a fly on the wall.” 

             Wednesday was the first day back to school after a four-day break so Mrs. M said, “What did you do while you weren’t in school? Type one thing in chat that you did.” Immediately my computer screen was filled with the students’ responses: played Pokeman, built a snowman, played with my dogs, played video games.  Mrs. M responded verbally to each student and then asked, “Cindy, how are the goats?”  One student raised her hand, and Mrs. M told her to unmute herself and gave her permission to talk about Princess, her cat. 

            Then Mrs. M introduced me and explained why I was there: “Just to see what we do in class.” 

            I smiled when Mrs. M told her students, “Sit up, nice and tall, and ready to learn.”  Students sat at a desk or table or on a couch or an upholstered chair. A blank paper appeared on my screen at the same time Mrs. M said, “Let’s write today’s date together.  You write on your paper as I write on mine.”  She wrote and asked students to show their papers and they held their papers so that we all saw them.

            Together Mrs. M and the students checked morning work.  They wrote and said words that have the same vowel sound as in the word globe and solved the equation 9 + _ =17. Students held up fingers to show missing numbers and they checked their work.  After checking and correcting a whole page of work, Mrs. M said, “Mark this page so parents can take a picture and send it to me.”

            For three hours, I observed much more than I can share in 500 words.  In a nutshell, I saw teaching and learning in a completely different environment and format than I used during my teaching days, and I observed the same teacher-student connections, the same instructions, the same mix of students.             During a follow-up FaceTime conversation, I asked Mrs. M what has happened during remote learning experiences that was unexpected.  Her response and some of my other observations will have to wait for another column.

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The Power of a New Pencil

Posted on July 25, 2013 by susanrray

images I’m fighting a buying impulse.  Pencils, spiral notebooks, and stickers are calling.  If I dare go to a store this week, I’ll come home with three bags full of back-to-school supplies.  I’d probably even buy plain white paper, a 500-sheet pack.  I don’t need anything for school, and my Grands already have their school things.  For most of my life, I’ve shopped for school supplies.  As a student, as a teacher, then a mother and teacher.  I like everything that says it’s time to start school.

But I didn’t always feel this way.  When I started school, I didn’t like it one bit.  Mother dressed me in my new dress and brown saddle oxfords and kissed me good-bye.  Daddy drove me to school and walked me to my first grade classroom.  I sat in my assigned desk until the teacher turned toward the chalkboard and then I bolted out the classroom’s open back door to the playground.

I had good reason not to like school.  My first grade teacher expected me to sit still and quiet on a hard wooden chair.  I’d gone to school several times with my big brother who was five years older and sat on a quilt on the floor right beside the teacher.  I’d colored pictures (probably with new crayons) and looked at books.  Our family lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone – including all the teachers.

My very first day of school, I ran across the playground, down the road, and across a few backyards to the service station that Daddy owned.  He put me in his car and drove to school.  He held my hand and shoulder tightly and guided me toward my classroom where my teacher stood, holding the door open.  I sat in my desk.  Head down and cried until the teacher said for everyone to stand and say the alphabet together before we copied the letters from a poster onto our lined paper.  Letters of the alphabet that weren’t even in the correct order.  My brother and his best friend had taught me to say the ABC’s – in reverse order.  So on that very first day of school, I stood to recite the alphabet with all my classmates and I said, “Z Y X W…” The teacher didn’t think it was funny, but my classmates laughed.

I ran out the door again.  Right into Daddy’s arms.  He held a switch he’d just cut and he took me behind a big oak tree.  Just the sight of the switch hurt me as if I’d been spanked.  Daddy told me I had to stay in my classroom and that he’d be right outside the door to hug me at 3:00.  It took about a week for me stop running and stay at school.

On the first day of school tomorrow, there might be a student or two who’d like to run out the door.  I hope these kids get the rewards for going to school that I did.  Praise, hugs, and a new pencil every Monday morning.  A yellow pencil with a smooth pink eraser.

 

 

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A Teacher’s Lament

Posted on January 10, 2013 by susanrray

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I said I wasn’t going to write about the tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut.  But now that Sandy Hook Elementary School has reopened, I hurt for the teachers who survived.

On that day in mid-December when I first heard about the senseless killings, I was stunned.  Just like when I turn off the TV or leave the room when a news story is about an abused child, I had to walk away.  I listened to the news periodically throughout the day and stayed busy.  I knew it would be a day, like 9/11, that I’d remember where I was and what I was doing.

A week or so later, a friend said, “Newtown must have hit you doubly hard since you were a teacher.”  We had talked about the children who wouldn’t open Christmas presents.  And we wondered how their parents and grandparents would make it through the holidays.  We ached for those who’d loss a child, whether student or teacher, on December 14th.  But my friend had the insight to allow me to bring other memories and grief to the surface.

I remember when my school first practiced lock-downs.  Fire drills and tornado drills were routine.  Lock downs weren’t.  Lock the classroom door.  Herd my students into a corner.  Pull down the shades over the windows.  If there’s time, cover the twelve-inch square window on the door.  And keep everyone in that one corner, along the same wall as the door, where someone couldn’t look through the small window and see us.  It was never said aloud – a corner where a bullet shot through the door wouldn’t hit anyone.  I huddled my 24 fourth graders into that corner and they learned the term ‘packed like sardines.’  The girls giggled and scratched each other’s noses.  The boys wiggled.  We learned the secret knock on the door that signaled ‘all clear’ and that it was okay to open the door and carry on with learning about electrical circuits.

Even after four years of retirement, I still miss visiting with teacher friends.  Laughing during a hurried lunch.  Hearing about a son’s baseball game.  A daughter’s gymnastics meet.  The funny things a grandchild said.

I can’t imagine the pain that the Sandy Hook teachers are feeling as they stand before their students.  They survived a school shooting and lost friends.  During my teaching days, our faculty lost two teachers.  Tammy to cancer.  Marcia in a car wreck.  Two young friends who should have had many more years to read aloud their favorite books to children.  Teachers who left their mark on students and fellow teachers.

Our faculty mourned together.  Questions swirled through my head and heart.  Where’s my friend who wanted to borrow the foldout book about the human skeleton to read to her class?  Where’s my friend who was planning her daughter’s wedding?

I can’t imagine the questions that haunt the teachers at Sandy Hook School as they carry on, teaching young children.  I can’t imagine the horror of a school shooting.  I ache for those teachers.

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