In January of next year, I will be going back to school.
I graduated Cal Poly Pomona with my BA in Liberal Studies, the track for elementary school teachers. At the time, that was my goal, but the classes I was taking gave me insight into how schools are run nowadays. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. As you might know, there is a heavy emphasis on the standardized tests children are required to take at the end of the year, so much so that I’ve heard horror stories of teachers’ jobs hinging on their performance.
I was also volunteering at my university’s preschool, which led me ultimately to where I am today. I found teachers who taught for the love of teaching, and I learned what an academic environment tailor-made to be developmentally appropriate looks like. You will never find a test or exam in any preschool worth their salt. You won’t find worksheets, you won’t find flash cards, and if elementary schools were built to be true to how a child is meant to learn, they wouldn’t either. They were at one point poised to look much like preschool does today, but time and tide changed our course.
The combination of the two led me to take my Bachelor’s degree but not continue on with my credential. I love preschool; I agree with NAEYC’s philosophy, and I like watching their little brains blossom. It’s where my heart lies. But I’m having some adult realizations, such as “you need money to live”. As little respect as our country has for teachers as a rule, preschool teachers and quality early education has even less. I would be hard-pressed to find a teaching position that pays better than the one I have now, which itself won’t help me much trying to live in Southern California.
However I may be criticized for it, I love Pinterest. I have been accused of being a middle-aged mom in this respect. My dashboard is covered exclusively in preschool activities, ideas, and classroom decor, but to get me in the spirit of starting to think like an elementary school teacher, I tailored my experience to see boards dedicated to the older-kid crowd. Something that began popping up immediately was ClassDojo, and I was transfixed. My heart skips a beat around technology that’s both useful and accessible in the education world; I’ve spent more time than I should have trying to convince my education coordinator to fight for iPads for the classroom. Pinterest is covered with ideas on integrating ClassDojo into the room, and one of the most popular ideas is reward tiers. 500 “positive points” per class means a no homework day, 2000 points gets you a pizza party, and so on. The more the ideas flowed, though, the more hesitant I became.
I had a child last year that our mental health coordinator described as having “severe emotional disturbance”. My co-teacher and I have both bled on account of him, and our other children have had their share of run-ins. Our entire science shelf, on at least one occasion, had been toppled by his efforts. He would bolt out of the door at any slight provocation. Regardless, I was his primary teacher, and we grew to have a trusting, if rocky, relationship; we did eventually get to the point where I could talk him down, sometimes. His mother rarely saw eye-to-eye with us (the school at large) on what the appropriate way to deal with his outbursts was. One of her ideas was to implement a sticker chart, which I largely disagree with in general, but was especially reluctant to implement long-term in the classroom. It had little effect in the first couple weeks of implementing it (whether he was too impulsive to be able to rationally control his behavior, he simply didn’t care, or both, is unclear), but his mother insisted on it, saying that it was the only way that he would behave and she wanted a visual reference of us holding him accountable.
My approach was one of respect: I tried not to yell at him, or quash his emotions. I gave him occasional space to vent his anger however he wished (short of hurting himself or someone else), and while the situation didn’t get better, he did begin to trust me. Looking back, I was a brand new teacher, and probably too unwilling to compromise; it wouldn’t have hurt me to implement it long-term and it would have made his mother happy, but I found that making an honest, respectful connection worked much better.
Once I realized the similarity in ClassDojo, my interest in it was immediately extinguished. This will likely be my last year as a preschool teacher, but I hope to carry the philosophy that drives it into elementary school. Teaching preschool has given me solid ground to keep my feet on as I continue upward. I hope to bring developmentally appropriate practice into my elementary classroom as much as is possible, and not be swayed by the glamour of fancy gimmicks or ideas without seeing its true viability. I hope that I can teach in a way that I earn the respect of my students. There is no point in teaching any other way.
I find myself with a new understanding that I don’t have to like, or even agree, with every aspect of my job. I can be an elementary school teacher without agreeing with the system in place, and I can teach a grade without standardized testing. It is unfortunate that our nation doesn’t respect its teachers enough to allow us to assess on a large scale in a developmentally appropriate way, such as projects, student demonstration, or (Heaven forbid) simple direct teacher observation. There isn’t much space for what I’m looking for, but I hope to create the space for change myself, on whatever scale I can. I cannot see a future in which public educators are shown the respect they deserve without being on the front lines, and maybe, in a small way, with my future colleagues, I can help create one.
Counting To One 