Here is a report from Carly:
I am in my third year of teaching, first year of teaching with CI. I don’t really feel like I have control of this stuff, but I do envision a future where I do! Everything you and the community members write about on the blog fits how I feel about learning and teaching and interacting with people. I have bought in, 100%, but I am probably only really doing about 50%. I haven’t figured out how to have a story artist, I only have a few jobs going on in the class, I only have a few names for the students and only in one class, I could do a LOT better at personalizing – right now it is really shallow stuff and it doesn’t really carry over to become a sort of folklore of the class. But I can see how next year I will do those things better and I know it will make my classes next year better. I have been circling and that is improving. I have been practicing staying in bounds. I have a quiz writer and story writer and quick quizzes have saved me this year because they are easy to give and grade and put in the book. I am using dictees with good results. The freewrites are pretty awful, but I am not getting too upset about that, the kids are happy when they’ve written 60+ words, they don’t care about the errors so I try not to either. I have tried using jgr but I am a bit soft and at this point they will just hate me if I reign it in, so that’s something for next year. This week I have re-normed with the rules, especially rule number 2 and that sweet smile with a slight edge is actually working. I was surprised and impressed! I was nervous about calling individual students out on their behavior because we have had some “verbal abuse” issues between teachers and students (blown entirely out of proportion, making us all crazy) and our union leader told us that we should make blanket statements to the class to keep individuals from feeling bad about being put on the spot (what?!?). Not surprisingly, that was not effective at all. But I genuinely love my students even when they drive me crazy, so I remind myself of that when I remind them of the rules and I think it comes across ok. We started reading Pauvre Anne and I am stumbling through, but moving forward. I had a handful of kids ask to take a copy home to read ahead, so that felt good.
Carly