The Best Day In Education

 

Let me preface by saying, picking one day to call, "The Best Day in Education", is quite difficult. I've had so many great days in the classroom or maybe just days with a few great periods. Over 7 years of education makes it hard to choose just one. I suppose I'll choose the one that comes to mind first, the day that I actually could run small groups in a middle school classroom, by myself, during my 3rd year of teaching.

I know that small groups does not seem like a big deal, elementary school teachers do it all the time and might I add, flawlessly. I observed some elementary school teachers before attempting small groups with 5 class periods, 55 minutes each, and 26 students in each class. My instructional coach helped me set up observations prior to starting, we planned for a month before the centers, and we even just had students transition in centers for a week before we ran them. She was my support for all the planning and implementing.

The day that I ran them by myself, I was surprised what my middle school students could do! We were reading a novel, Number the Stars, and I created three groups: Theme, Plot, and Setting. Those three groups would rotate every 12 minutes. Theme with start with me, giving them asynchronous work and answering any questions they had, others would be silent reading. Once silent reading was over, students would go to their stations and centers began. Theme would go from my asynchronous work to reading individually or in partners on their own. Plot would listen to the book on audio and one student would facilitate the group and read out questions in my own novel that I provided, so they can talk about the book. Setting came to me and we read the chapter aloud after summarizing and they would answer the same questions. 

After the reading centers, Plot would come to me and we would continue to review the current reading and work on the written assignment. I would give scaffolds to help them use academic language and deepen their understanding of the text. Setting and Theme would work on the assignments with a partner. The last 8 minutes of that class, we would review all together the text with a few minutes to spare! 

This was the best day for me because my students, the students who I was told had behavior issues and could never do small groups by other middle school teachers and their elementary school teachers, did it! I trusted them and they loved the autonomy and though that was just one day, after we continued to practice this over the unit, I saw students reading levels and confidence grow! 

We were even able to meet a Holocaust survivor at the end of the unit and my students were asking about the novel, making connections, and truly showing they understood the text. I think it was the best day because I saw what could happen in education, what happens when you build relationships and trust students, when they take ownership of their own education and are proud of their work and progress. I was proud of myself too, this made me feel more confident as an educator that these centers worked and that I could truly challenge students at all levels.