SEL: Building Efforts Ahead

In the days ahead, I plan to build the social emotional learning, character development, and emotional intelligence efforts that lead a classroom community that's respectful, warm, and helpful.

What will I do?

Embed SEL into Academic Lessons
I'll reread the book I wrote with colleagues and include many of the lessons included and others in the daily teaching to promote emotional intelligence and social emotional learning.

Explicitly Teach the Attributes of Good Character
I hope to find ways to explicitly teach, discuss, and work on the specific elements of good character.

Explicit Review of the School Handbook
Teachers at my school spent a lot of time creating the school handbook which includes the policies and protocols for good community behavior. I will find ways with my team to do that at the start of the year.

Listen to and Follow the Lead of a Whole School and Team Initiatives Related to this Effort
Our whole school is involved in ongoing discussion and efforts in this regard, and I will continue to listen to and follow the lead of my committed and dedicated colleagues in this regard. Efforts such as matching SEL with good literature, using more specific language, discussing the "size of the problem," and making this work visible are some of the topics the staff as a whole is forwarding.

Improving the Science Program

This year our school system started using the FOSS kits once again to teach science. We used these kits years ago.

As I think of the way we used the kits and taught science this year, there were a lot of positive efforts including the following:

• Each teacher took leadership over specific science teaching/learning goals
• We established rotations to teach all science standards
• We scheduled some team days to complete grade-level STEAM projects
• We acquired many supplies to support the program
• We instituted a lot of fun projects
• We created related websites and online review exercises to support student learning
• We utilized related online programs

I also believe there's room for growth in the year ahead including the following efforts:

• Now that we understand the kinds of time, space, and preparation the teaching takes, we will probably re-look at the schedule to make sure we have the right time of day and day of the week to teach this material.
• I want to organize the lessons I taught in a good order so that the lessons fit into the time available.
• I would also like to integrate some of the lessons with the math teaching/learning efforts I lead. 
• I want to reorganize my classroom to better support science teaching and learning. I want to make it more lab-like where materials are easily accessible to students to support the study.

As I review this year's efforts in the months ahead, I'm sure I'll make this list more specific and tailored. I look forward to the efforts ahead. 

Coaching Myself: What's Important?

School life is very complex, and there are many, many ideas that circulate to improve school from many arenas. No teacher can consider all of these ideas or get involved in every initiative. So one challenge for educators is to prioritize and work towards the areas that matter most in their practice.

I will think about this again and again in the next few months as I focus in to do good work and make thoughtful impact. I want to veer away from efforts for which I have little voice, choice, or impact, and move towards the areas where I can make a difference.

So where am I headed:

• Continuing improvement of the math program to teach all students well
• Continuing improvement of the science program to teach all standards and students well
• Continuing improvement to the portfolio efforts
• Continuing improvement to our efforts to embed and forward social emotional learning/emotional intelligence/character development efforts
• Continuing efforts to create a welcoming, warm, and dynamic learning environment and collaborative team of students, family members, educators, and administrators

These, I believe are the mainstay of my practice and the areas where I am expected to do well. I am looking forward to what the goals for the system and school will be. I am wondering how they will be similar to my priorities or different, and I will update my priorities to reflect those goals in the months to come. 

Ideal Math Unit

As I work to grow the math unit, I'm wondering about my idea. I believe that at this time, the ideal includes the following:

Meaningful, Engaging Introduction
Connecting the main concepts and themes of the unit to the real world in meaningful, engaging ways.

Inquiry Board
Bulletin board for questions, investigations, and debate related to unit concept.

Vocabulary
Bulletin board and other strategies to develop unit vocabulary.

Explicit Instruction
Teaching the skill, concept, and knowledge in explicit ways.

Practice
Opportunities to practice specific skills online and off.

Project/Problem Based Learning
The chance to apply the learning to a problem/project situation with multiple opportunities for enrichment, review, interdisciplinary connections, creativity, collaboration, communication, presentation, reflection, and assessment.

Assessment with Unit Standards
Online/offline unit standards' assessment

Math Writing Process
The opportunity to engage with math writing process as students clearly present a concept via pictures (models), numbers, and words. Using self-editing, peer-editing, and teacher-edits to develop this skill and complete a final copy.

Home Practice
Practice packets and online practice for students to deepen and strengthen their learning. There will be flexibility with home study as I work with families and students.

The challenge is to fit all this in with engagement, empowerment, meaning, and positive result. I'll be thinking about this in the days ahead.

Leading My Practice: Goal Focused

As I lead my practice ahead, there's lots to think about and many children to teach and support.

The biggest challenge right now is to stay the course with as much student care, attention, and positive support as possible. There are many to teach, and of all those students there's a range of investment, interest, support, skill, and follow-through. I want every child to continually develop with a positive attitude and deep learning, but as with any program, there are many challenges in meeting this goal.

For now, I'll follow through with the program set that includes the following:

• Realistic, explicit introductions and practice to support student learning
• Lots of one-to-one and small group coaching
• Multiple opportunities for students to help one another and test their own skill as they learn
• Opportunities to show what you know and learn what you still need to practice

Our program is a standards-based program that focuses on the identified state standards with a variety of exercises. In the future I hope to include more engaging project/problem based learning and math writing process--but time, numbers, support, and expectations have challenged that hope so far, but I'm not giving up.

The children are capable of good learning and growth, and I'll remind them of that as we work to master algebraic thinking skills this week. Onward.