Reality 101: CEC's blog for new teachers

Kaylie: Inspired by Inclusive Education

Don’t you love coming across a novel, poem, movie, or song that you first encountered years ago and really enjoyed or that had a lasting impact on you? You get to have that great experience again and reminisce about what was going on in your life the first time you heard or read the piece? This happened to me this week.

I’m a nerd, so it came as no surprise that what I came across were two articles I had read in grad school. The articles both discuss inclusive education for students with moderate-severe disabilities (i.e., my students). There were so many “highlighter-worthy” statements that I just had to pass along.

Charmelle: Reading—The Places You’ll Go

Dr. Seuss once said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” This quote truly resonates with me as I think about the needs of my students and their struggles in the area of reading.

Last year in my first year of teaching, I found it challenging to teach my students how to read. All my previous graduate coursework had prepared me to provide students with all of the strategies and tools to use when they were reading, but not so much on how to provide reading instruction. Like many special educators, I am committed to ensuring the growth and progress of my students. And just like Dr. Seuss’s quote I want to allow my students to read more and learn more so that the places they will go in life are limitless.

John: More Than a Journal

"I have to find someone to take my baby," I heard a teenage girl say as I was standing at my door for hall duty. I looked and saw a teenage girl just barely starting to show signs of pregnancy holding the hand of a boy who looked barely old enough to drive a car. I don't teach this student. I have never actually noticed her before, and I don't know her name. She is certainly not alone at my school as a teenager who is pregnant and taking classes, but there was something about what she said that struck me. High school is hard enough as it is. This girl's biggest concern is weightier than passing a geometry quiz or memorizing a few lines from Shakespeare.

Danielle: Summer Reading--It’s Not Just for Kids!

Knowing that I was starting a whole new position when I left school at the end of May, I had all these grand designs that I would do lots of planning and develop lots of ideas during summer break.  Reality set in a week later when I returned to start teaching summer school. I was teaching six different courses in a day—three at a time in the morning and three at a time in the afternoon. The resulting chaos isn’t relevant to this discussion, except (of course) for the honing of my differentiation skills (three courses in the same room will do that!), and the severe lack of planning for my new job as the K–12 gifted and talented coordinator my school. Sigh.

Jessica: 2012 American Librarians Conference

I recently attended the 2012 American Librarians Association (ALA) Annual Conference. This being my third big conference in one school year, I think I can officially call myself a conference junkie. What can I say, I’m a new teacher and I still have a lot to learn. This conference caters to librarians, but since its overall purpose is to promote the message that reading and having access to resources are important, I attended it.

As a rural district, the local library can be a huge – and free – resource in helping to meet unique student needs. I attended a number of workshops and panels in the educator’s strand, which gave me a number of brainstorming points to consider as I enter my next year of teaching.

Theresa: Reading Wrap Up

Unlike my fellow Reality 101 bloggers, who have been on summer vacation for a couple weeks now, I am just starting my first week. The last couple of weeks for school seemed to get longer and longer. I have never felt so burnt out from teaching before. I think that the stress and climate of the year seemed to have really caught up with me. Even being tired and ready for the year to be over, I still managed to get in a couple really cool projects and activities at the end of the year.

Allisence: Field Trip Fun – Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Did you know that helicopters have two rotors — one main rotor and one tail rotor? And did you know that helicopters can seat anywhere between two and 60 people? Well, these seemingly random facts are now things my students can rattle off at a moment’s notice thanks to our most recent life experience trip, otherwise known as a field trip.

As the self-declared Queen of Field Trips, the school secretary and I brainstormed all kinds of adventures my class could go on for our big end-of-the-year field trip finale. We tossed around the Children’s Museum, the Science Center, a light rail trip to the public library, and a few impossible ones too like Disneyland. In the end, we decided to take advantage of the fact that my husband is in the military and has connections at the local army aviation National Guard base.

Jessica: Maurice Sendak—An Obituary in Book Recommendations

I just read about the death of Maurice Sendak, and felt that all-too-familiar twinge of sadness as I let go of yet another piece of my childhood. For many — including myself, my husband, and now my children — an oft-selected story for bedtime is Where the Wild Things Are. The book is a classic tribute to the wondrousness of a child’s imagination and the power of beautiful illustrations. Besides making the bedtime ritual in my household transition with ease, Sendak gave me a number of fun classroom moments as well.

Enjoy reviewing all of his titles, but here are three of my personal choices of Sendak books for use in the classroom. All three are Accelerated Reader (AR) books worth .5 points, and their AR book level is included below:

Theresa: One Person, Making a Difference

This past weekend I attended the Illinois Council for Children with Behavior Disorders Winter Drive-In Conference. While not all of my students have behavior disorders, they do have a wide-range of disabilities and I found that a lot of the information and strategies can be applied to all of my students. I attended a special workshop about teaching self-management skills to students, and I am so excited to get to implement it in the next couple of weeks. I also attended sessions on best practices for working with aggressive youth, and another on using wikis, blogs, and other technology. Ideas are swirling in my head, and I am practically giddy with excitement to try them out with my students.

Richard: Halftime!

This week is going to be the last week of school for the first semester. As I put the finishing touches on final exams and study guides, I took a moment to reflect on my students over the past four months and would like to share some of my reflections with you.

My students have made some notable gains. I currently have one sixth-grader. He came to me refusing to do any work that required him to read or connect several ideas together. He also could not subtract, multiply, divide, and would get instantly aggressive at the mere mention of fractions or decimals.

Melissa: I Care, Part 2

Wow! I thought I would write a follow-up to all of the comments on my last post. Thank you all so much for taking the time to share your thoughts. Because of confidentiality issues, I can’t tell “the whole story,” but I will try to touch on as much as I can.  :o)

I do have a very positive relationship with this student. He has told me I am the best teacher he has ever had and that he loves talking to me. He tells me more things than I care to know (you know, middle-school boy stuff like socks and girlfriends and bloody video games). We’ve had lots of talks about how smart I KNOW he is.

My students and I have taken learning-style inventories, most recently about two weeks ago. I have a wide range of learning styles in my room and try to incorporate them as much as possible. This particular student scores high in the areas of visual and kinesthetic learning.

Students have lots of choices when it comes to showing me what they know. For example, right now in language arts we are doing a lesson I call “Choose Your Own Literary Adventure.” Each student read the book of his choice and then selected a related project from a menu of options. They could write a letter to a character, develop a test on the book, write an imaginary interview with a character, make posters to advertise the book or the genre, design new book covers, or write fortune cookie fortunes to characters based on what happened to them. So there’s lots of cool stuff going on with this project.

Melissa: I Care

Lately I’ve been struggling with something in my classroom. I’d like to think there’s a magical answer out there that will somehow make its way into my brain, but in reality I’m not sure there is a black-and-white solution to this problem.

My question: How do you make a student care? You know, that genuine, intrinsic desire to do well — just to do well, not get something extra out of it? Is it even possible to make someone else care?

Most of my students do what is assigned, turn it in on time, and make corrections when asked. They care about doing a good job and getting a good grade. If they need more time than what was given for a particular assignment, no problem, as long as they have been working on it.

My students have a great range of writing speeds. One could write a novel over a weekend (in fact, he has), while others struggle to turn thoughts into words. You need an extra day or two? I’m cool with that. I care more that they are truly learning and can demonstrate that somehow (I’m pretty flexible with the “how”). But you gotta give me . . . something.

I’ve been a bit more experimental in my approach this year, trying to discover ways to motivate certain students. But at what point do I switch from accommodating needs to enabling apathy?

Jennifer: Learners Seeing Learners

When I started my new job last fall, I needed to obtain a second credential in order to meet my students’ needs (well, and California’s…). I took one course on reading instruction, and the professor always emphasized the importance of students being able to “see themselves as readers.”

Day in and day out, I think about that as I encourage my students to read in groups, together as a class, and even when they work together using their various forms of communication to complete a task. Some of them are excellent readers, while others need consistent prompting. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how in the world to get my struggling students to “see themselves as readers” when it takes so much motivation and encouragement to even get them to try to read.

I’ve realized that before they see themselves as readers, they need to see themselves as learners.

Jennifer: Mission: Literacy

Reading instruction and assessments have been at the forefront of my mind lately. I am currently taking a course for a second credential specific to the various methods of reading instruction, including read-alouds, shared reading, literacy circles, and so on. This is a repeat class for me because my units from one university didn’t carry over. I got an A in it the first time, so I thought it would be a piece of cake. I was so wrong.

When we take the quizzes on what each lesson structure is, I get a good grade . . . no sweat. But when I go into detail about how I actually use the different methods in my classrooms, the “alterations” that are necessary to meet the needs of my kids either cause huge confusion or deviate from the structure so much that, really, I’m just teaching reading my own way. But what else can I do? My students have needs that require changes to be made.

For example, for Shared Reading Instruction and Guided Reading, I need to do everything digitally. I have to make PowerPoint/KeyNote presentations in order to help my students focus on the front of the room and be able read the text. For some of my students, text that is too close requires more movement to scan, which requires more muscle control, which takes away from focus and comprehension of the text altogether. Also, our “Word Wall” is done the same way so I can also put it on my students’ computers and make frequent changes.

Ellen: Why Are You Dressed Like A Hot Dog?

Around Halloween, my school holds a “Story Book Character Day,” which I found kind of offensive my first year. I was shocked that many kindergarten and first-grade students came to school in costume, especially when I found out all those Star Wars Storm Troopers were supposed to be book characters. There are many students at my school who do not participate in Halloween for religious or cultural reasons, so I thought this excuse to wear costumes to school that conveniently coincided with the holiday was a little insensitive.

That being said, I dressed up as Eric Carle’s The Grouchy Ladybug and my students absolutely loved it. I was also very pleased to find that almost all of the other kindergarten and first-grade kids did dress up as actual book characters, as I guess most families either felt that it didn’t glorify Halloween or maybe didn’t want their students to be excluded.

Teaching Literacy Through “Stories on a String”

By Gayle Solis Zavala
Special Education Teacher, Gove Elementary, Belle Glade, Fla.
CEC 2009 Clarissa Hug National Teacher of the Year

Hello again . . . Before I get started, let me tell you a little about myself. I am a California native who now lives in southern Florida and I am married with three adult children and an amazing grandson! I have been an educator for 24 years. I worked as a speech-language pathologist for 10 years and then decided to pursue my master’s degree in Special Education.

Over the years I have enjoyed teaching a variety of classes with students with mild to severe intellectual disabilities. About six years ago, I had the opportunity to pursue a second master’s degree in Reading. I was very inspired to learn about and seek successful strategies to teach reading to students with cognitive disabilities. At the end of this last school year, a new position was advertised at my elementary school and all other schools in our district: an RtI (Response to Intervention or, as some refer to it, Response to Instruction) teacher. My principal selected me and I am looking forward to this new experience.

I find myself interested in additional projects outside of the classroom. Apart from the busy commitments I have through CEC (I serve on the Florida CEC Board as the Children and Youth Advocacy Network Coordinator), I have also been active with VSA arts, the Knowledge Through Friendship Peer Buddy Project, and the non-profit Farmworkers Coordinating Council. I grew up very influenced by my Hispanic culture and the arts. And the arts is something that I feel will always influence my teaching.

Let's Read

I spent a lot of time trying to encourage my middle school students to read. As you might expect, I encountered some resistance from time to time. My school implemented a mandatory 20-minute reading block per day. Our team decided that the Language Arts teachers would implement the silent reading during their classes. The Language Arts classes were twice as long as the other core subject areas at this particular school. This made it easier to fit the time into the class. At first it was not easy, but it became one of the most loved portions of the day after the students and teachers developed a consistent routine.

Here are some of the ideas that we used to integrate silent reading time into our school day.

1. We gave the students options. There were a variety of books for the students to select from that included children’s books, audio books (with the text to follow along), graphic novels (comic books), young adult novels, and short stories.

Writing an issue for any of your students?

Do you find it difficult getting students to write? This can be especially true if they are students with any writing issues. My own son struggles with writing as a part of his learning disability and thought I'd share some of the things that have been helpful for him and that I’ve picked up from watching lots of great teachers work with writing.

We have found success replacing the written task with a computer, AlphaSmart, or The Writer (this one we really like, as it has built-in word prediction software and a typing program). When we realized our own son's writing disability was so severe, we started scribing for him and introduced a keyboard as early as possible. He does not always like to use it in school, but he uses a keyboard a lot at home.

Here are some other ideas that I have tried or seen others use in the classroom.