Vanessa Tallaire - “Everything a New Elementary School Teacher REALLY Needs to Know (But Didn’t Learn in College)”

“Everything a New Elementary School Teacher REALLY Needs to Know (But Didn’t Learn in College)” written by Otis Kriegel. 

Summary of the Text

The text is organized into four main sections, which are:

·         Before the School Year

o   Chapter 1: Making Your Classroom Work for You

o   Chapter 2: Learning Your School’s Culture

o   Chapter 3: Setting Up for a Terrific Year

·         During the School Year

o   Chapter 4: Working with Students

o   Chapter 5: Working with Your Principal

·         Your Students’ Families

o   Chapter 6: The Parent-Teacher Relationship

o   Chapter 7: Communicating with Families

o   Chapter 8: When Families Come into the Classroom

·         Your Life as a Teacher

o   Chapter 9: Managing the Workload

o   Chapter 10: Balancing Your Responsibilities

Each section is then divided into two or three chapters that elaborate on information that will likely be experienced during these various components in a teacher’s future career. The author manages to present the information within these chapters through the use of examples, strategies, anecdotes, guidelines, and diagrams gathered from his own teaching experience, as well as through the experiences of other colleagues and friends.

Resources and Strategies

The strategies that follow are from the “Before the School Year” section of the text and represent the ideas that I found to be most intriguing and helpful. These suggestions are to be implemented over the summer before the students arrive in order to ease the stress and help teachers prepare their classrooms for the year.

(Kriegel, 2013, p.10)

A fun suggestion from the text is to give clusters of students’ tables or desks names. The text suggests naming these “tables after a part of the curriculum that the children are currently learning. (Kriegel, 2013, p.8) For example, if your class is currently learning about the characteristics and needs of living things from the science curriculum, you may consider naming the tables ‘the mammals’, ‘the amphibians’, ‘the insects’, ‘the reptiles’, etc. for the duration of your lessons on that specific topic. The students will have fun with the idea and will be more likely to remember key concepts.

A suggestion from the text that I would love to implement into my classroom is to have a ‘lunch box crate’ where students will put their lunch kits when they come into the classroom in the morning. The purpose of the ‘lunch box crate’ is to keep the students’ lunches together, as well as it keeps them from rummaging through their backpacks during lunch or snack times. When students have less reason to go through their backpacks, it is less likely that they will risk damaging or losing important notes or homework that is being sent home. (Kriegel, 2013, p.17)

Another suggestion from this section is to have ‘homework folders’ that serve as a way of transporting homework and important notes from school to home safely and undamaged. Ideally, these folders should have two pockets, one for homework and one for communication. This system would ensure that parents are easily able to see any notes that are coming home for them to read or sign. The author suggests encouraging the students to decorate their folders so that they take more ownership and responsibility for them at the beginning of the year. The author also suggests asking the students to hand these folders in every morning to a bin labelled ‘homework folder bin’, so that the teacher can easily access and correct the students’ homework from the previous day. As well, the teacher will have access to seeing if important notes or permission slips are coming back, as well as if they are being read, received or signed by parents. I think this strategy could be altered to fit the needs of kindergarten to grade 2 students who may not have homework, where the homework pocket of this folder could be renamed ‘reading log’, and used as a reading recording sheet where parents and students sign off on the books they read each night. (Kriegel, 2013, p.73-77)

The following ideas are from the “During the School Year” section of the text and focus on strategies that are to be implemented throughout the school year. I found that a lot of these strategies could be adapted and implemented in any early years classroom, regardless of age or grade.

If you are in a classroom that requires students to raise their hand before speaking, the author suggests alternative, creative ways to ask your class to answer a question or speak. Instead of always asking students to raise their hands, ask them to touch their nose or rub their belly when they have something to say. This will add some humour, engage the students and make them want to answer questions on a regular basis. (Kriegel, 2013, p.103)

Another suggestion from this section is to throw a publishing party or a class museum where the students can read or display their completed work to parents, students from other classes, or other staff members in the school. When students know their work is going to be viewed by others, they are more likely to put greater effort and pride into their work as they do it, rather than rushing through it to be the first one finished. (Kriegel, 2013, p.123-124)

The following suggestions are from the section titled, “Your Students’ Families” in which the author gives suggestions on how to communicate efficiently and effectively with your students’ families, and how to involve them in your classroom’s day-to-day routine.  

(Kriegel, 2013, p. 194)

To get more parents more involved in the classroom, the text suggests creating a weekly volunteer list of times when it is convenient for you and your class to have a parent come and help out in the classroom. The author also suggests finding out if a parent’s job has something to do with a curriculum topic and inviting that parent to speak to the class or be interviewed by the students for a writing assignment pertaining to their career. (Kriegel, 2013, p.176)

The author has a lot of great ideas for how to survive your first parent-teacher conferences. He says that if you are in a school that allows you to manage your schedule for that day, it is wise to spread challenging conferences out over the week or days available, so that you do not feel overwhelmed or burnt out with parents who may be a bit high-strung. Another suggestion is to try and reserve the last conference of the day for parents who are fun to speak to; this way you are always ending on a good note. (Kriegel, 2013, p.194-195) As a way to keep track of time and keep your meetings to the allotted time given, Kriegel suggests arranging the seating so that you are sitting facing a clock. This will also keep you from constantly checking your watch or awkwardly turning to see the clock. (Kriegel, 2013, p.199)

In the last section, “Your Life as a Teacher”, I found the following strategies useful, in that I believe they will serve as great mantras and reminders in my future as a teacher and to help me avoid burn out in my first year. 

In our first years as teachers, we will want to plan as much of the year as we can in order to get ahead and keep our head above water. However, the author suggests limiting your lesson plans down to one or two weeks ahead of schedule. We cannot predict the pace or direction some lessons may head, therefore, lesson plans you made months in advance, will have to be redone or reworked. This will cause you to spend double the amount on one lesson plan, which isn’t very time efficient in the long run. (Kriegel, 2013, p.208-209)

Another suggestion that I found interesting is to live an active lifestyle outside the classroom. The author makes the point that teachers who are multidimensional and have several interests and passions outside of the classroom, are more likely to bring those practices into the classroom and keep their teaching fresh. The students will appreciate the breadth of knowledge and resources that the teacher may bring in from his/her outside activities. (Kriegel, 2013, p.221)

The last suggestion that I really liked was the idea of offering homework help or catch up sessions during one or two lunch hours each week. These lunch-time sessions will save teachers from having to come in early or stay later with individual students, as well as encourage a multitude of students to come, making better use of the teacher’s time. As well, the teacher can share the responsibility of hosting this session with other colleagues who may also have interested students. (Kriegel, 2013, p.219)

Critique

The strategies and suggestions that I chose to share resonate with my current teaching philosophy, and I believe that they can be easily incorporated into my current practicum, as well as my future classroom. I really enjoyed reading this text and would definitely suggest it to other new teachers. The layout of the book is ideal for teachers who are casually looking for more information or are looking to pinpoint a specific topic and explore it further. I also found that the strategies, suggestions and diagrams could be easily adapted and implemented across any of the early year grades; I might go as far as to say that some of the suggestions may also work in middle or senior year classrooms as well. My only critique of this book is that I wish it were written by a Canadian author; some of the strategies suggested throughout the text regarding assessment, homework, or report cards do not apply to the Manitoba Education system.

Connections to the Course

I found that a lot of the strategies mentioned in this text support what we have learned in this course, such as creating a safe, secure learning environment where students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings. This was described in the text as the author suggests creating a “Feelings Box” where students can write down their private thoughts and feelings anonymously as a way to express themselves and to build a sense of belonging among the students. (Kriegel, 2013, p.121 & 123)

However, I also found that other strategies went against some of the articles we read. For example, in Kriegel’s text, he suggests using a chart to award points to students in order to reinforce appropriate classroom behaviour (Kriegel, 2013, p.113). This type of reward system was deemed unsuitable by authors, such as Alfie Kohn for example, in that rewarding behaviours and learning strategies makes students view learning as an extrinsically motivating force, rather than an intrinsic one.

Reference:

Kriegel, O. (2013). Everything a New Elementary School Teacher REALLY Needs to Know (But Didn’t Learn in College). Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing Inc.