I recently had the honor of writing for an amazing new website called Kids Deserve it. Although their website kidsdeserveit.com is new, they have long been a Twitter sensation. Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome created the hashtag, #KidsDeserveIt. The idea was to create a place where people could share ideas and opinions that would challenge the way we have always done things in education. That definitely sounded like my kind of place! If you have not checked out their hashtag or their website, you are really missing out! It is truly an inspiration and because this place now exists thousands of students, teachers, administrators and families' lives have been impacted in the most wonderful way possible! The following is my blog, OneWord, One Mission which was featured on kidsdeserveit.com on January 1st, 2016. A big thank you to Todd Nesloney for the opportunity!
One Word, One Mission
I thought long and hard about what my one word for 2016 would be. It had to be a word that would guide me, focus my attention, and ultimately lead me in the direction I want to go this year. I had several words on my list that I thought would be perfect, but as usual when my one word appeared before me, instantly I had a feeling, and I knew immediately this was the one. It defined my personal goal, my professional goal, as well as the overall attitude for what I want this coming year to be. My ONE word for 2016 is... SHINE!
Shine defines the attitude I want to have in my personal life. I want to be a positive role model for my family and friends. It defines my role as an educator to be the light in my students' lives, to encourage and champion on their behalf. It defines my overall goal in life which is to set the example of what a wife, mother, friend, and teacher should be. My passion is education and my goal this year to shine a light on the fact that we have amazing tools that are not being accessed or used in our classrooms simply because it does not meet the traditional views of what a classroom should look like.
I have been, for some time now, actively working to change my mindset when it comes to education. The traditional views of the classroom in regards to furniture, instructional techniques, response to intervention are defined for us, but what do you do if that doesn't meet the need of all your students? Do you continue the process based on the idea that this is the way it's always been done, or do you stop, reflect on what you have tried, and then step outside of the box and look for a new approach? For me the answer was to jump out of the box, open my mind, and explore the possibilities that were waiting for me. What I found changed my life, my students' lives, and opened up a world of understanding, compassion, and joy for a lot of misunderstood children.
Alternative Learning Environments...
This is where my journey outside of the box began. I was approached with the idea of creating an alternative learning environment in my classroom. The idea was to see if this new environment would help the struggle I was having in my classroom. I had a full class of twenty-five students. Sensory, attention, and behavioral issues abounded within my four walls and for the first time I found myself overwhelmed. There were so many students who needed me and what I was giving them didn't seem to be meeting their needs.
Alternative seating seemed to be a way for me to do just that. I started by removing most of my desks and lowering some of the existing tables. Now the students could sit on the floor while working at the table. I introduced a variety of seating choices which ranged from bean bag chairs to a Rubbermaid container that had been transformed into a seat. What I found was that almost instantly my behavior problems were gone. The attention issues from before seemed to become manageable. These students were no longer focused on keeping their chairs on the floor or their bodies in their seats. They were instead focused on the actual work itself. I had students who had not completed a single task all year completing their assignments with minimal redirecting. It was truly amazing! Our day became so much more efficient and more importantly I saw my students become successful. Let me say that part again... I saw students who had been labeled as behavior problems, lost, or low achieving start to thrive in this environment!
Multisensory teaching became my next adventure. The problem is this... response to intervention is great. It is necessary and demands our attention, but it is NOT THE ONLY WAY! The students who are placed in intervention almost never come out of intervention. I see this in my school when a child is placed into intervention in kindergarten, first grade, they are usually still receiving some form of intervention in fourth grade. Why is this? It's certainly not from a lack of targeted intervention. In the elementary school where I teach I have some students who were receiving as much as an hour a day of reading intervention along with a 25-30 minute guided reading group with me. Yet the progress was painfully slow. At some point a new technique must be introduced. Why aren't they learning in the same way the other students are? Maybe it's because they don't learn the same way. Maybe their brains store and process information differently. Continuing the same interventions, the same approaches are not producing results so let's shake it up a bit!
I started using associative movements with the beginning blends we were featuring for the week. I began teaching them silly movements that would give them an anchor to store the information. Next I introduced visual sight word cards that actually had the words themselves embedded into the picture. The cards also taught a motion for each word. I found that if I made the motion for the sight word my students could instantly recall the word. These were words we had been reviewing over and over again with no success. A simple motion had the ability to help them recall the visual picture and then they were able to produce the sight word. It. Was. Phenomenal. Hope was found. A light was given to these struggling learners. They were once again excited about learning and more importantly a new confidence had been restored to them.
Traditional? No, most definitely not! If you visit my classroom you won't find desks and chairs. You won't see us writing our spelling words three times each. What you will find is students who love school, who love learning, and who are actively engaged in the learning process. You will find students who are confident about their abilities and who recognize a mistake for what it truly is...a learning opportunity.
So let the light shine bright, let it define a new path for education. Let it be a path that leads to innovative teaching, compassion, understanding, and a thirst for what is best for our students no matter what it looks like. Our kids deserve it!
~Liz
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