Leading Your Classroom Community on Love

Here’s the truth about me:  I run a classroom on love.

Here’s another truth about me:  I am a terrible teacher.

No really, I am.  If you were to walk into my classroom at any given moment, I cannot promise that you won’t see students up walking around, talking to their neighbors, making jokes, laughing, and sometimes yelling (hey, passion is loud).  The floor is probably messy, there are papers hanging out of desks, books are scattered all over the carpet, and there are half-finished posters hanging on the wall.  If you were to pass by us in the hallways, you may see students smiling at each other, laughing, and, I promise, we are not standing in a straight line facing in one direction.  There are probably shirts untucked, belts missing, and a couple of my students may be wearing a jacket with a logo on it.

It drives people crazy.  I know it does.

What Other People Think about a Classroom Community of Love

I see the looks of disapproval in the hallway and the stress on their faces when they walk into my room.  I see that uncomfortable look on their faces and for a second, my stomach drops.  I get nervous that I am not doing something correctly.  I quickly think about the student who’s crawling across the floor looking for the pencil and I snap at them to get to their seat immediately.

“We have to look presentable when others walk in.”

It’s what I immediately think.  I apologize to whoever walks in and tell them they walked in during a transition and that it doesn’t always look this crazy, but deep down, I know the truth.

My students know the truth too.  The visitors probably know the truth too and I am naively assuming they think I “have it all together.”

I don’t have it all together.  But my students and I, we’ve got it all, together.

That’s cheesy.  I realize that.   But I wholeheartedly mean that.

What My Students Think about a Classroom Community of Love

I came back to school on a Friday after being out for a conference.  In my mailbox, there was a stack of letters from my students that they had written for me for Teacher Appreciation week.  They said things like:

“I like my teacher because she’s fun.”

“My favorite thing about my teacher is she is always herself.”

“My teacher’s superpower would be creativity.”

“My favorite thing about my teacher is she always makes boring stuff to halfway decent stuff.”

“She gives you chances.”

‘My favorite thing about my teacher is that she’s funny.”

“My teacher’s superpower would be nerd power.”

“My favorite thing about my teacher is she lets us get on the Chromebook almost every day.”

“One thing I want my teacher to know is that I love her.”

I know some of you reading this are thinking:  What is wrong with her? They never do any work.  They spend all day having fun, playing on the computer, and folding paper planes.

Actually, no. Not really.  We do work.  We do a lot of work.  We do a lot of hard work.  But my students don’t think of that when they’re asked to reflect on their relationship with their teacher.  They don’t think of their relationship with me tied to work or learning.  Why is that?  Is it that they haven’t learned anything all year?  Is it because they aren’t working daily on improving who they are as readers, writers, mathematicians, and critical thinkers?

No… it’s because while they’re working on all of those “school” things, they are also working on becoming better friends, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters.  They are working on becoming kind, compassionate, creative, strong-willed, independent, self-reliant, and loving human beings.

They won’t remember that six-page reading assignment aligned to the Common Core standards that took them an hour to do in 10, 20, or 30 years.  But when they look back on their time with me, they will remember…

• times during recess that they busted out laughing with their friends;
• the puzzles and projects they worked on together;
• the jokes that their teacher made to lighten the mood and wake them up in the morning; and
• the fact that their teacher loved them.

Proof that I am, in fact, a mess.

What I Think about a Classroom Community of Love

I’m going off on a tangent here, so let me get back to my point.  My point is that I am a terrible teacher.   Let be super clear with you here:  I am a terrible teacher in the sense that I can’t always get my students to stand in a straight line and I haven’t figured out the best way to remind them to put their names on their papers.  I don’t always remember where I laid down the papers I was about to hand out five seconds ago.  I trip over my words, I make mistakes when teaching math, I sometimes let my students work on busy work while I sit at my desk for a few minutes and take a breather.

However, those moments are rare because I hate pushing students to be compliant for the sake of being compliant.  So, to outsiders, it might look like my class is out of control and all over the place.  In fact, in talking to a parent the other day, my principal referred to my classroom management style as laissez-faire and I took it as a compliment (and I think that’s the way he meant it) until I looked up the actual definition.

LAISSEZ FAIRE:  a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering

In truth, if my classroom was run in a true laissez-faire manner, it would look the scene from Lord of the Flies where there is a pig’s head on a stake and blood all over the place.  The real truth is that my classroom environment is not the result of accidental neglect, but rather months and months of intentionality.

The Intention Behind a Classroom Community of Love

You see, every year, while I’m building classroom routines and expectations, signing classroom constitutions, and trying to review with my students how to subtract with regrouping, I’m also working on several little things that I didn’t even realize were a part of my classroom management plan until, well, this week, when I felt like someone brought them into question.  These things, I’ve realized recently, are what keep my classroom functioning through the chaos.  Even though we have a classroom set of rules designed by students that focus on responsibility, respect, and safety, I have two additional unspoken rules for myself that guide me through the year.

Love them first and always.

and

Make things fun.

Love Them First and Always

My first unspoken rule is to love them first and always.  On the first day of school, as my students are leaving the classroom, I tell them, individually: “I love you and I’ll see you tomorrow!”  Most of them are taken aback at first because they’ve never heard a teacher say I love you to their face.  And, truth be told, it feels a little forced on that first day for me too.  But it sets the tone.  It tells them that I love them, unconditionally, JUST BECAUSE they are in my class.  I love them, even though I don’t really know them, and that they don’t have to earn my love, they already have it.

Then, I say it every day after that and I show them that I love them through my actions by caring about their problems, working with them to find solutions, treating them with respect, and listening to them.  It sounds woo-woo, but it works.  When students realize that you love them, even when they act unpleasant, even when they forget their homework, even when they make a mistake, a strange and wonderful thing happens:  they develop a love for you too.

A lot of teachers will say that their classroom runs on respect, but I caution you to consider that respect will only get you so far.  You may respect your boss, but you’re not going over a bridge with them.  People will literally do anything for someone they love.  (Disclaimer:  I AM NOT ASKING MY STUDENTS GO OVER A BRIDGE WITH ME.) Those tough kids, they need your love most of all, and once they understand that you’re not going to take it away because you’re not “feeling it” today, they will work for you.  I promise.  I’ve seen it over and over and over again.

Make Things Fun

My second unspoken rule is to make things fun.  I literally cannot stand even the most mundane tasks (must be the Aries in me), but it is so much harder watching someone else do mundane tasks just for the sake of doing them.  Every day, I try to add a little something-something to the classroom to make it more fun.

Sometimes, it’s playing a game as part of a lesson or working with partners or sitting wherever they want for a half hour.  Sometimes, it’s cracking a joke in the middle of class or busting out a dance break.  Sometimes, it’s a fully-designed flipped lesson on the Chromebooks, which they love and takes most of the work off of me.  Whatever it is, I try to make sure that there is something joyful in every day so that they can remember that fun thing they did today with Mrs. Woods, even if it has nothing to do with the actual work they did.

I am a terrible teacher, in that my room is always a little messy and I may not return graded papers in a timely manner.  But, I am also a good teacher.  I love my students and we have fun together, all while working and learning and growing and being better versions of ourselves.  My classroom isn’t run in a laissez-faire manner, it’s run on LOVE and JOY and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Reader, as you’re reflecting on your own classroom management style and your interactions with your students, I challenge you to think about unspoken rules that you have in your classroom.  Are there underlying themes that help your classroom run?  What would they be?  Please share them in the comments below – I look forward to reading all about them!

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Flipping My Elementary Classroom

This post is a reflection of the implementation of my flipped classroom.  If you’re looking for how to implement your own flipped classroom approach, check my post So You Want to Flip Your Elementary Classroom, Now What?

I took on a giant project this year by flipping my classroom.  The flipped classroom approach is something that I’ve seen floating around in the education community for a few years now, yet I’d never felt like I had sufficient resources to make it happen.  This year, I jumped all in.

Probably prematurely, admittedly.  But the learning is in the mess, right?

 

As part of my Ed.S. program at Bellarmine, I had to design and implement an action research project focused on increasing student achievement.  I felt like this was my opportunity to take the risk that I had wanted to in my classroom, and I knew I would have the support of my administration, my Ed.S. mentor, and my colleagues.  I am a huge proponent of educational technology and I’d recently acquired two Chromebooks thanks to a Donors Choose project bringing my count of classroom devices from four to six.  With six devices, I felt like I was ready to change the world.

I even made a Google folder called, “How to Change the World This Year.”  I can be a bit pretentious at times.

That being said, I spent a lot of time researching flipped classroom approaches, designing and creating videos, monitoring student progress, and reflecting on the process along the way.  I did some things well and there are many things about the process I would change.  I’d like to share some of my learning with you in hopes that it will help your flipped classroom transition smoother.

Let me start by saying that my approach to a flipped classroom was and is much different than the typical flipped classroom.  In a typical flipped classroom, students would watch a video about the topic for the next day for homework and then come to school the next day with some prior knowledge and experience, ready to dive into more hands-on experiences.  For my third grade students, many of whom don’t have internet access or devices at home, this wasn’t possible.  I opted for an in-class flip using a station rotation model, where one station was the viewing of the video and interactive components.  Other stations I used in my classroom at the time, were a modified version of teacher-led guided reading, independent reading, and partner practice.  You can read more about a typical flipped classroom approach in Jon Bergmann’s book called Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day (affiliate link) or at his blog here.

I would also encourage you to learn more about the alternatives to the typical flipped classroom models.  There are some examples from Jennifer Gonzalez over on Edutopia.

 

Four Things I Learned By Flipping My Classroom

1.  It’s better to start small and build up.

In my original action research, I stated that I’d increase reading achievement of my students by flipping my classroom.  If you’re an elementary teacher, you are immediately aware of the problem with that statement.  What component of reading?  Within my third grade classroom, I teach phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  In a typical lesson, I’d try to teach each of those components within a common theme or unit, using one or more texts and pulling as much out of it as I could.

So, when I first started my flipped classroom, I kind-of, almost, might have tried to do it all at the same time.  I was overly ambitious.  I learned right away that it was too much – for me to prepare and for my students to find beneficial – so I had to back down.  I ended up flipping just the phonics portion of my lesson, then slowly adding vocabulary and comprehension. It was much smoother once students knew the routines and expectations.

2.  Make sure routines and expectations are explicit.

Students have to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.  In my school, the constant infusion of technology into my students’ instruction was new for many of them, which caused some confusion on how it was to be used.  Because I was so excited to just get started, I glossed over routines and expectations which was a terrible idea.  Always start with your routines and expectations.

Some ideas for routines to teach when flipping your classroom:

• How to transition in between stations
• How to get out technology/devices and put them back
• How to access the videos/activities (e.g. the learning platform you’re using)
• What to do when you’re finished
• How to ask for help
• Voice levels during the station

3.  You still need to differentiate.

In my mind, a whole group lesson was the same for everyone and differentiation came in with the other stations.  However, when my students struggled with the flip and I really began to reflect on my teaching, I realized that I did differentiate during whole group instruction, it just wasn’t as explicit.  For instance, I might stand next to a student who was having trouble focusing or prompted responses when students struggled.  There is a definite benefit to being face-to-face with students when teaching so that you can gauge their reactions and understanding.  This is much harder to do through a screen.

You can still differentiate a whole class lesson through a flipped approach, it just takes more work.  For example, add several videos for students to watch.  If they understand (and show understanding through an online activity like a Google quiz) after watching the first one, they can stop and move on to something different.  However, if they’re still struggling, they can watch more videos and have multiple tries to show their understanding.  This helps personalize the experience of a flipped classroom for each student and allows them to take more ownership of their learning.

4.  Assessment and accountability go hand in hand. 

Assessment is just best practice.  When I started my flipping my lessons, I originally had it set up so that students watched the videos, then came to a guided reading group, where I did the assessing.  But I soon realized that students were not being held immediately accountable for the learning in the video, so they came to the table and had I to teach what they were supposed to already know!  It defeated the entire purpose of the flipped classroom.

So, I started utilizing some wonderful tools to hold my students accountable and help with assessment.  The G-Suite for Education (specifically docs, slides, and forms/quizzes) is a great way to do this.  They are relatively easy to set-up and intuitive for students to use.  You can read more about how I’ve used Google forms to assess my students on a previous blog post.

The flipped classroom model was a learning experience for myself and my students.  If and when I do this in the future, I’ve got a much better idea of how to approach it so that things run smoother.  Have you implemented a flipped classroom?  Did you do the typical flip or a modified in-class version?  I’d love to hear your successes and horror stories!  Comment below and let me know!

 

How to Survive Your First Teaching Job if You Start After the First Day of School

I wasn’t hired for my first teaching job until September 21st.  School had already been in session for more than a month and I went into a classroom full of students who had only known the weird place known as “limbo” for the last few weeks.  It was chaos, to say the least.

No routines and procedures had been established.  There was no real behavior plan in place.  The teacher who was fulfilling the position up until that point was balancing between two jobs, so she her focus was on her new job as the instructional coach.  The students knew there was a new teacher coming, but they didn’t know when and they had no idea what to expect.

Then there was me, fresh out of college, begging for any school that would take me.  I had no real classroom experience outside of my college courses and student teaching.  I had no experience in third grade.  I didn’t know what to expect either.

Perhaps you, new teacher, are walking into a similar situation.

Let’s just say that my first year of teaching was a train wreck.  I wish could personally go apologize to every student in my classroom, as well as all of their parents.  Looking back now, seven years in, there are so many things I would do differently.

As desperate as you are to start your new teaching job — whether it’s a month after school starts, six months into the year, or 45 days before the last day of school — it’s important that you have a plan.  The students that you are inheriting have likely been in a state of transition leading up to your new place as their teacher, so they are probably craving some routine and consistency.  Your students NEED you, now more than ever, to be the guiding light for them.

Below, I’ve listed a few things I think will help you succeed in your new position:

1.  Establish routines and procedures for how things are done.  How will your students enter the classroom?  Where will they put their book bags?  How should they go about sharpening their pencils?  How do they ask questions? (Yes, don’t assume they know to raise their hand… they don’t.)  Don’t assume ANYTHING.  Have a clear, explicit procedure laid out for every single part of your day.  You don’t need to type it all out and give it to your students, but there should be a discussion about each of them.  If a student doesn’t follow the procedure, explain it again and have them do it correctly.  Hold them accountable.  Remember, these students have likely had no one to consistently telling them how to do things.  It is your job to tell them.

2.  Have a very clear and concise behavior management plan.  Have a set of classroom rules and follow them.  Make sure you’re aware with any school wide rules and expectations there might be before your start so that you can hold students your students accountable for those as well.  Talk with the principal about his or her expectations for handling behaviors in the classroom as opposed to sending them to the office.  In addition to making a plan on consequences for negative behavior, make an even better plan for rewarding positive behavior.  Your behavior management plan should focus on positive reinforcement, as well as teaching students how to replace inappropriate behaviors with the correct one.  This is something that I tweaked over and over again my first year.  Keep tweaking until you find something that works for you.  However, be sure that you maintain consistency.

3.  Find a mentor with whom you can be honest.  Depending on how your state handles new teachers, you will probably be assigned a teacher mentor.  Hopefully that person is caring, understanding, and able to guide you through your struggles and mishaps as a first year teaching.  If they are someone you feel like you cannot talk to, seek out other teacher friends.  Bottom line, you won’t get through this career without support!  Reach out to others and find someone you can trust.

4.  Be flexible.  You will plan a lesson that is too short and you have to find something else to do for the next 20 minutes.  You will have an awesome lesson that gets interrupted by an unexpected visitor.  Someone will throw up when you’re least expecting it, probably all over your math manipulatives.  Go with it.  Fake it until you make it.  Teaching is about people and people are unpredictable.  Being flexible with your plans is key.

5.  Forgive yourself.  You are going to mess up.  You are going to have bad days.  You are going to make the wrong decision.  Keep going.  The kids will forget about whatever it was by tomorrow and they will love you anyway.  Reflect on your mistakes and learn from them, but never dwell.

Truth is, your first year will probably be a train wreck anyway.  But now that you know better, you can do better.  Keep on keeping on, new teachers!  And, as always, if you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to reach out.  I’d love to hear from you!