K. Clancey June 2021

At the end of each reading and writing unit, I include a lesson on reflection: what it is, how we do it and more importantly why we do it.  As a second grade teacher, I feel teaching young children the process and value of reflecting back on learning and events is a lifelong learning skill which I hope that they will continue to apply throughout their lives.  I begin by showing them a mirror, and connecting their thinking to the ideas of their reflection looking back at them.  I model the thinking that goes on when one reflects by asking the literal question: What did I learn?  Then more importantly teaching and modeling the thinking about the process and how I might revise it next time by asking the big overarching questions of:  Would I do it differently next time?  How might I make it better?  Why did one thing work and another not?  Did I find any strategies especially helpful for me in this process?  What advice would I give others who will be doing this?  Your thoughts might be that these are some pretty heavy questions for second graders, but they can do it if the modeling of the process is done through a think aloud right in front of them over and over.  The advice my students offer me is often much more insightful than my own responses.

As this 2020-2021 school year comes to an end, I can’t think of a better time than now for me to take some of my own advice and reflect on this school year, the School Year of Covid.  Starting with the big question:  What did I learn?  

I learned that we are never safe and to never think, no matter what county you live in, that you are.  I learned that people need people and that isolation from family is crippling.  I learned that love is a much stronger feeling, emotion, powerful force that I had realized.  I learned that there are amazing people in our world, selfless, strong, brave, and brilliant who put others before themselves even when it means risking their own lives.  I learned there is always hope and we need to keep that hope alive.

Over this past year I also learned to be more observant and a better listener to those around me.  As a teacher, I saw the isolation of my colleagues and students.  Zoom just didn’t seem to cut in in that area.  I was heartbroken for those who missed graduations, proms, and for some, almost a whole year of learning.  Covid taught us new meanings to the words fear, sadness, loneliness, and mourning.  Covid also expanded our definitions and usage of many words rarely applied before such as shield, cohorts, and the oxymoron of social distancing.  Mask, a word mostly used during the month of October, is now a noun I use multiple times every day.  Remote students in my class became frequent users of the word glitchy and mute as well as a new meaning to the phrase, you kicked me out.  This year I actually did a lesson on adding dialogue to a writing piece by teaching the strategy of, unmute your character, the whole class got it! 

Over this past year I also learned some new things about myself, my teaching, and my lessons.  In  past years, cold, rainy, or too hot weather kept my students indoors for snack and lunch yet this year we lived like the mailman:  Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these students from the swift completion of snack and lunch. We put on our coats, hats, gloves, rain boots and whatever else was needed, we gathered our chairs, towels, yoga mats and ate outside.  This beautiful 20 minute outdoor snack time really benefited my students, my relationship with them, and my lessons as they had time to talk, face to face with others their age.  If time permitted they would play, remember that word?  I had conversations with them about snacks, games, families, and pets.  During one of these breaks, trying to think of socially distanced games, I taught the whole class how to play the game, Mother May I.  For those of you who don’t know this game, one participant is the Mother (can be a father as well) and all the others are the children.  They line up in a big long line and attempt to make it up to Mother, by asking if they might take some steps.  The names of these steps encourage imagination and creativity as children create names for steps and how they might go.  Mother then can give permission for their request by stating, “Yes you may” , or deny their request but offering an alternative.  Here is how a round may go:

Child:  “Mother, may I take 8 Giant Steps?”

Mother:  No you may not, but you may take 4 Umbrella Steps.”

You would be amazed at how children innately create what an umbrella step might look like as well as other steps such as a ballerina step, a shark step, a frog step, a football player step, a fairy step, the list goes on and on.  

Outside we also discovered a beautiful pond.  I always knew it was there, yet we never really paid much attention to it until this year.  A freshwater habitat right in front of us and as luck would have it, our science unit was habitats. We observed and learned about frogs, frogs, and more frogs.  We actually had an entire day devoted to the study of frogs called:  Froggy Friday.  I had never done that before.  Soon after, we discovered other living things in the pond, turtles, tadpoles, fish and plants, amazing plants that would soon sprout big yellow flowers.  Guess what the next unit was: plants.  Had this outdoor science classroom been there all along?  So glad that we found it during our new 20 minute snacktime break.  I also revised many lessons in a need to address my remote students and the social distancing that needed to be maintained in the classroom.  Tried and true lessons, taught with some revisions over the years, now expanded to include a wide variety of technology choices.  With my students, we learned how to use Jamboard, Google Docs, Sites, Slides and a wide variety of online reading sources and learning tools.  The use of Google Classroom provided me with a means of teaching that more efficiently met the learning styles of my students by providing them with written directions as well as the auditory ones that I gave.  Visual learners could review screencasts of lessons and processes taught live during the day.  Communication improved as parents were able to see what their children were learning and watch lessons as well.  Zoom, a tool I was barely familiar with, now became a lifeline to teaching.  It also provided me with an additional tool to meet with parents throughout the year and not just during conference time.  Parents found it to be more convenient than coming to the school and waiting in the hallway for their scheduled conference time.  

As this year ends, I reflect on my learning.  I have learned that at the end of my twenty first year of teaching, that I can learn.  Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?!  For this old dog learned many of them and learned them fast! 

I encourage all educators to pause and reflect on their learning and experiences this year.  You will cry, smile, feel a tug in your heart, and wish to God that the whole thing never happened.  But, there is no denying that we all learned a great deal, and that is worth sharing. 

What are some of the things you learned about yourself or your teaching? I’d love to hear.