Lori,
This is very interesting. Behind my wondering about their comfort level is an
experience I had at an Institute for Environmental Education. We were all
gathered together at the beach for a week to learn about integrating
environmental education across the curriculum. All the teachers were elementary
ed, and had a wide variety of talents. We were a very relaxed group, and bonded
well.
One of the workshops was about nature jounals, maybe it was the great talent
of the woman who taught us, but I've always wondered what it was that made us
feel so self-concious.
By the way, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at one of your training
meetings! Better yet, I'd love to be a teacher! Do your teachers know how lucky
they are? I'm so jealous of them all!
ljackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I am not so certain. It was day four, a great group with only one new to
the district teacher, so trust levels were high. As I noticed the struggle,
we quickly encouraged them to work in groups--which made an observable
difference in terms of stress levels. When we debriefed the strategy, just
a couple talked about being uncomfortable with the idea of drawing. Others
talked a lot about struggling to make a mental image. Know this, we had
worked with visualization with fiction and not met these difficulties. In
all honesty, I believe that we under-estimated the difficulty these teachers
would have transferring a strategy across genre. My partner felt she should
have modeled this more explicitly. There are certainly some lessons to be
learned.
1. Strategies have to be taught ACROSS genres and text types.
2. The ability to use a strategy well can become genre specific.
3. Model, model, model!!
Incidentally, this was such a great class to work with! As a fairly new
district level coach coming from a primary classroom in the district, with a
partner who is very young and somewhat worried by how she would be perceived
because of that--I think we would both say we were nervous working with a
local audience. I have presented at regional and national conferences, and
was far more concerned about this class than any national presentation!! It
is easier to be the expert from 40 miles (or more away) that it is to
sometimes work with local teachers. Our own concerns were put to rest--we
had an enjoyable week exploring strategy instruction.
Lori
Joy/NC/4
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go
hand in hand. http://www.responsiveclassroom.org
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