Mrs. Young's Blog

It seems like each time I tell someone what I do, I hear, “You must be so patient!” Just as working with middle schoolers is extremely unappealing to me, I know that some people find it difficult to imagine being in a room with 20 4- and 5-year olds for 6.5 hours a day. But, the comment about patience always bothers me a little. For me, it boils down to this: when you love what you do, you don’t need patience. You need perspective.

If I can keep it in my mind that I’m dealing with 4- & 5-year olds, and have developmentally appropriate expectations of them, then I don’t need patience to deal with the occasional meltdowns, tantrums, or case of the sillies. In other words, if I understand child development (and I do) and expect my 4- and 5-year old students to behave like 4- and 5-year olds (and I do), then I don’t need patience when they do just that. I must keep it in perspective that they are acting their age. Every teacher needs to maintain that type of perspective about who his or her students are.

I have the task of working with students who are often new to being in school and are just developing proper social, physical, and cognitive skills. If I remember that, I don’t need patience when they have trouble sharing or expressing themselves. I teach them how to do those things. That’s what Pre-K is for.

We did a unit on community helpers and the children loved it! We talked about all kinds of different occupations and of course we covered the standard jobs (police officer, fire fighter, doctor, etc.). We turned the dramatic play area into a fire station complete with outfits, pop up fire truck, phones for dialing 911, and “water hoses”. We added community helper words to our Word Wall and had books on various occupations all over the classroom. The children’s favorite activities came from a community helpers kit I checked out from the public library. We used puppets, books, toys, fingerplays, and stamps from the kit over and over throughout the unit.

We integrated community helpers into every domain! We drew pictures of what we want to be when we grow up (social studies, creativity). We pretended to be various community helpers in dramatic play (creativity). We read books about various community helpers and discussed them (social studies, language & literacy). We read books and did corresponding activities, such as reading I Love Tools! and then using a tape measurer (standard unit) & hammer cut outs (non-standard units) to measure the length of the table (language & literacy, math) and reading Germs Make Me Sick! and then doing a hand washing activity where we used a thin layer of petroleum jelly on the children’s hands to mimic germs and had them “wash” without soap and then again with soap to see and feel the difference and learn the importance of proper hand washing (science, health).

We had a lot of fun with our community helpers unit. My favorite quote from the unit came from one of my students who said, “I want to be a teacher because they help people who can’t do hard puzzles.”

The fireman puppet talks to the children about dialing 911

A very important key to success in the classroom is good relationships with your parents, especially in early childhood education. Parent-teacher partnerships are important to children’s success all the way through high school, but as an early childhood educator and the parent of an elementary school student, I see it two ways. It is oftentimes more stressful for parents to leave their children in a Pre-K classroom than in an elementary school classroom. Huh?! Think about it: for a lot of little ones (and parents), this is their first time in school and they spend a good portion of their day with us. That’s hard for parents. I work hard each year to build strong relationships with my parents. As a parent of young children, I understand that it is not always easy to trust someone else to take care of your precious baby. I want my parents to know that when they leave, their child is in an environment where they will learn (of course!) and be taken care of and be loved.

When I think of building my relationships with parents, I compare it to good customer service. I want my parents to be raving fans. I want them to trust me to teach, nurture, and love their children. Like anyone else, parents want to be heard and to feel that you pay attention to and know their child. For me, the key to building and maintaining good relationships with my parents is communication and an open door policy. I try to be very transparent at all times about what is happening in the classroom and my parents know they are welcome to join us at any time. When you don’t have good relationships or your parents’ trust, it can make things hard. When you have good relationships, success is inevitable!

Science, for anyone at any age, is about exploration. Period. Exploration of concepts and phenomena and theories and hypotheses. So at its core, science is simple. If science is simple, why do so many early childhood educators have a block when it comes to planning science instruction? As teachers of young children, we may be making things harder than they have to be. For a long time, I struggled with and probably overlooked science activities in my Prekindergarten classroom. After taking a professional development course in science instruction, I realized why I had such a block in this content area. In trying to plan for my young students, I didn’t have the right attitude about science. I was reflecting on the last science I had studied (and disliked).

As early childhood educators, we don’t try to teach our children how to solve algebraic equations; rather, we teach them the basic skills and concepts that they will build on to be able to solve those equations when the time is right. Similarly, we don’t try to teach them to diagram a sentence or write essays; rather we teach them the basic skills and concepts that they will build on to be able to handle higher level activities. In short, we plan developmentally appropriate lessons for our students. Why then, do we have a hard time doing the same with science? The answer is our attitudes towards science, of course.

As I attend more professional development courses in science instruction and also give presentations at various education conferences, I run into the same questions from teachers:  How can I make science fun for my students? What kinds of activities are appropriate? What kinds of activities meet our science content standards? How can I extend a science activity? I tell them all the same thing. Most importantly, science is everywhere in our classrooms. It is not limited to one or even a set of carefully planned activities. The gears on our shelves are science. The pets in our classrooms are science. The leaf hunt (or rock hunt or stick hunt or color hunt) our classes go on are science. The food tasting activities we do are science. The books we read about animals, seasons, and the stars are science. When we paint and mix colors, that is science. When we allow our students to take the time to explore the world around them, that is science.

One of my interests is staff development and I’ve been trying to devote more time to that end. Yesterday, I was a presenter at the 2010 Annual GAYC Conference (Georgia Association on Young Children). I led a session on science in the early childhood classroom, with activities and standards aimed at Pre-K teachers. I’ve done a few conferences so far in 2010, but this was a totally new experience. It was my first time at the annual GAYC Conference in any capacity. My co-presenters and I were shocked by how many people showed up for our session…I mean, I started sweating when I realized a) how many people wanted to hear what we had to say, and b) that we certainly did not have enough materials for all of the participants. Even through my panic, I was excited that so many people wanted to learn more about teaching science! Overall, I think we did a good job but of course I’m hoping to get some feedback once the conference coordinators go over the evaluations from the participants. I am genuinely interested in staff development and presenting at conferences and want to get better each time.

I hope that, if nothing else, the participants took away the most important thing we tried to convey:

Young children are natural scientists. They are curious, eager, and willing to look at, touch, taste, listen to, smell, and manipulate objects in their environment to gather information. As teachers, we simply need to facilitate what comes naturally to our little scientists. I think that sometimes we (teachers) make things too complicated. I used to have a block when it came to planning science activities for my students, until I realized that I was reflecting on the last science I had studied and not what science is for young children. Science (for everyone) is exploration and young children are awesome explorers! As educators we have to create a love of science that is lasting so that our students don’t become bored and give up on science. I want all of my students to see themselves as scientists and to really believe that Science Rocks!

Science Rocks Handout (GAYC)

Marker Experiment Data Sheet

Color Mixing Experiment Data Sheet

Floating S Experiment Data Sheet

This year I have more non-English speakers (or ELLs — English Language Learners) than usual. Out of 20 students, 6 came in with very limited or no English and 1 comes from a home where his family speaks English, but not American English. To say that we’ve had some communication issues this year would be an understatement. As I have watched the children struggle for these first few weeks of school, my heart breaks for them. For the first week, five of them were terrified because not only had they never been in a school setting before, but they didn’t know what to expect and couldn’t fully communicate. Needless to say, there were lots of tears everyday for the first 2 weeks of school. The 6 ELLs all speak Spanish and luckily, I have a good command of classroom vocabulary in Spanish….which led to me having 5 new appendages for those first couple of weeks since my assistant does not speak Spanish at all.

Each year, I have more and more students who do not speak English. This year, as I watched my babies having a hard time with the transition to a new setting and a new language, I wished for a solution to their difficulties. My classroom vocabulary only gets us so far once they warm up and want to start telling me about their favorite things and what they do at home — in Spanish. My knowledge of how to genuinely help these children is based on experience. We use lots of hand gestures and pictures and repetition, but I know there’s more to this. So, I’ve decided to take some classes this winter. I’m taking some TESOL classes for an add-on to my certificate. In the meantime, can my Spanish speaking parents let their children watch American television? (gasp!) Sesame Street, Dora, Diego, & Handy Manny, to name a few, will all help the children pick up some English words. That way, everyone is happy. The children can watch a little TV, the parents don’t have to learn English or feel like they aren’t sharing their culture with their children, and I don’t have to watch the children suffer quite so much during the first weeks of school!

Part of what prompted me to start this blog is the attitude I keep running into that Pre-K isn’t real school and so naturally, I’m not a real teacher. I feel like my time spent each day in my classroom with my students very pointedly negates that. I have encountered this attitude from (sadly) parents and (even more sadly) other teachers. Elementary school teachers to be exact. I kept trying to think of a way to get the word out that Pre-K is important and that Pre-K teachers are teachers too! So here we are.

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