Truth: It can be taught

There was a huge milestone for my class today.  Like, so big it was almost EPIC! Seriously. Wait for it....drum-roll please!!!! All of my students walked from our classroom to the gym for PE in a straight line, WITHOUT talking. Seriously, it was so amazing. The best part was that three other teachers saw my kinders walking in their most awesome line and were impressed!! e even got a shout-out from another teacher-"kinders, you're rocking the hallway today!" It was mind blowing! I did not know that something as simple as teaching kids how to walk in a civilized manner in the hallway could be so incredibly rewarding. Oh my goodness. I am still elated just thinking about this HUGE milestone that my students have passed.
Okay, so maybe there is the possibility that I am enjoying kindergarten way more than I ever thought I would. It really is enjoyable.  I am to a point now that I can do a little breathing and think about my classroom as a group of learners that I am going to have for the whole entire year!! They're all mine! That might sound a little creepy but  having subbed year after year after year and never having a group of kids long enough to see if I was even effective at my job was frustrating.  Knowing that I have the opportunity to apply what I have been learning, through formal education with my Master's Degree and classroom experience, is absolutely mind blowing to me.
I honestly feel like I won the lottery with this job.  The community of professionals I work with are top notch.  Everyone I interact with really wants to be at school and a part of the community.  I have never really been able to articulate what I was missing as a substitute as far as teaching but now that I have it, I am struggling to describe it.  The community.  It is that good.  Having a principal who supports me 100%, checks in on me on a regular basis, and follows through with what she says she is going to do, AND visits my classroom is outstanding! I've never had a principal come in and just want to observe.  It doesn't bother me at all to have people visit my classroom. In fact, I like it when people check in because they are another mind I can glean information from in order to improve the learning that is happening in my class!
Speaking of visitors, I had a big one in my classroom last Thursday.  Actually, it might have been Tuesday. I can't remember. I am sitting down at the carpet with my students, in a circle.  It is the first day of our new science unit and I have just brought out the worms in their bins and am giving instructions on how to hold the worm in addition to introducing vocabulary They are very excited to get new critters to hold and observe. I have quite a few scientists in my class. :) The students are anxiously awaiting a turn to see what I have in the dirt and worm filled containers.  In walks the superintendent! She is very nice and had a badge on so I knew she was someone important from the district.  She promptly sits down in my students' circle and dives right into the lesson as I take a roundworm (the ones that get really, really long and skinny in the rain), and ask "who wants to hold a worm?" and the class erupts into screams of surprise, glee, joy, nervousness as they wait for their chance to hold or look at a worm.  I wasn't quite sure how she would take the loud excitement but she just hung around, asked the kids questions, held a worm and said thank you for letting her visit! I love visitors!

I feel I can't close this post without a shout-out to all have supported me and encouraged me while I have started this new job.  It has been amazing to be surrounded by people who genuinely are excited that I am teaching kindergarten in my very own classroom. It's still a bit surreal that I get to wake up and go to the same classroom every single day, until the end of the school year.  Really. It's happening.

Learning curves, Kindergarten style

Hello! This and the forthcoming posts are a dramatically different approach to teaching that I was experiencing four years ago at this time.  Four years ago, I was juggling five grades, in a culture I knew nothing about, with very little constructive feedback that was useful.  I left feeling bitter about teaching but not yet ready to give up.  After all, I had started my master's program at SPU and figured that continuing to learn would give me a shot at landing my dream job.  It took four years but I think I have landed my dream job.  Though kindergarten is not a grade I would have told you I would voluntarily teach, it seems it was the job that I needed to break though and gain the experiences I have been craving.  I am finally putting all that conceptual, textbook knowledge to good use.  Further I actually see the impact of an effectively run professional community looks like.  I did not know what a professional community looked like as a participant.  As a sub and a student at SPU I gained all sorts of factoids and concrete data about what works in a school, what doesn't work, and the many types of professional structures that can exist in a school.  I'm experiences it and it is a thousand times better than reading about it.  When you read about something, you tend to think, "awwww, that's nice," or "sounds good in theory but what about practice?" There is no reading and doubting here.  It's real.

 In the first two weeks of my job I have set goals, attained them, critiqued them, reflected upon myself as a teacher and the skills I have and need to learn.  A huge factor in this is the fact that I have a mentor who I work with on a weekly basis, who helps me by walking me through the evaluation process, providing feedback, and answering my questions (about anything!!).  The second critical factor is that I have a principal who wants to be in my classroom!! This is one of those conceptual things that I knew was supposed to happen but had never experienced it knowing I would get feedback that would help me improve.  It's amazing to come out of a meeting with my principal feeling as though I am not failing as a teacher and that it's absolutely okay to not be perfect at everything.  I was also told I am very intuitive towards what I need to learn and the amount of reflection I can provide about myself and teaching is incredible.  (Thanks SPU!) I thank SPU because my entire program consisted of reflecting upon myself as a teacher and my teaching experiences.

My principal is also a hoot. She is hilarious.  She is also one of the most straightforward, honest, and caring people I have met.  She truly wants me to succeed as a kindergarten teacher.  Even when she hired me, she told me that she knew my experience was not in kindergarten and that she would provide the support I needed to scaffold my knowledge of kindergarten instruction.  In my feedback today, she reiterated that she is keeping my learning curve in mind.  It's incredible.  I cannot say that enough.  To finally have a professional community where rambling on and on about teaching is acceptable and you feel supported and welcomed is the most amazing thing ever.

Labels and feeling Christian (or not)

I have to say that perspective is everything.  I frequently get a look of shock when I tell people that I voluntarily coordinate/direct youth at my church.  I certainly don't do it alone, I have another trusty adult or two by my side as I attempt to guide these youth towards what it means to be a Christian.  However it was recently brought to my attention that I am most certainly not a youth director, I am a youth coordinator.  There is a distinquished line between the two labels, apparently.  However, I have been thinking a lot about what it is like to be told I am not something.  This is not the first time I have been told I am not something but somehow it has gotten me to think deeper about who I am and what I am wanting to do with my life.  For the past few years I constantly hear, well you're not a real teacher when you're a substitute.  I have learned to take the comment as an opportunty to make people think what a real teacher is.  In fact, I once asked a group of students what is a fake teacher, if I am not real?  I can't remember the reaction but it certainly got them to stop and think about the meaning of their statement that I am not a real teacher.  I think I am comforted to know that I have an answer to being told that I am not a real teacher.  I answer a question with a question .  So how do I respond what I am told I am not a youth director? This one is harder that the being told I am not a real teacher because I have not had as many years preactice being a youth director as I have being a teach. 

Right now I am really uncomfortable with being told that I am not a youth director.  I keep asking myself what is the difference between a youth director and a youth coordinator? Why do I do what am doing with youth when I am told I am not something?  I will tell you that it is the youth who drive me.  I want them to experience what feeling like a Christian is.  I want to provide them with opportunities to view Christianity from their own eyes and express themselves.  I want to create great moments of question because I think that is one of the greatest gifts I can offer to a youth.  

Tonight at Theology Pub I was able to listen to different viewpoints on youth ministry and what it provides for a church.  The concencus was that, as a result of having youth in one's congregation and providing them with opportunities to serve their church, experience large gatherings with other Lutheran/Chistian youth, and building a comfortable community, you get the future of the church.  So what happens when the support to keep engaging these youth is not there? I'm left feeling slightly deflated and wondering how to I minister to youth who do not have pastoral leadership. 

The conversation tonight was evolutionary and we really dug deep into the shifting ideology of society and how this creates a challange in ministry.  Can we minister the same way we did 15 or 20 years ago? Most certainly not because the culture and demographics of church have changed.  Church is not always the center of people's day to day routines.  I see this in the ratio of families who come on a regular basis and sacrifice things like sports to come to church compared to those who attend church service or activites when it's convenient to their schedule. Dispite not being able to minister in the exact same way as I was ministered to 20 years ago, I still think there is a key to ministering and connecting to today's youth.  Excitement.  They have to feel the excitement of what it is like to interact with other youth in the non traditional setting of church.  I like to call it "feeling Christian."  The great thing about "feeling Christian" is that there is not one way to feel Christian.  The downside is that it is hard to describe what feeling Christian feels like because it is different for everybody and being in different places and spaces make each of us feel different.  The other thing is that it take an enormous amount of faith in one's self to continue to search for more of that feeling once you have experienced it.  Getting youth to that experience is one of the challanges I face in what I do.  I now am asking myself questions like "so, just what am I doing to provide these youth with experiences to feel Christian?" or "how do I understand what experiences they crave to experience feeling and being Chrsitian?" It's a tough one that I do not have the answer to as I have just asked myself the question. 

 I still cannot describe in a concise amount of words the feeling that I get going to the National Youth Gathering in New Orleans two years ago.  That feeling spreads like a virus when you have 35,000 (yes, that is THOUSAND) youth in one city on a mission to experience serving others on a large scale.  I get giddy with excitement just thinking about it, let alone talking about it.  But that is just it, the feeling I can't describe is what I want my youth I am ministering to to feel so they can be strong and sure in their own faith.  This excitement leads to the passion of outreach; the desire to work for the benefit of others.  I think this is really hard in today's society where value is measured in things, best car, most money, highest paying job, latest smart phone, you get the idea.  Creating a feeling of Christianity is hard (keep in mind, I use feeling singularly but am implying that each individual has their own feeling) but that might just be what I am being called to do as a youth leader/coordinator/minister/director/mentor/whatever you want to label it.  

What this week has taught me is how important it is to listen and check in with myself periodically ensure that I am whole and right in my own faith so I can lead others.  I would not be a good leader if I was not taking care of my own faith. 

 How I take care of my faith has certainly changed over the past few years but what has continued to grow is that excitement of being a Christian and all it has to offer me so I can continue to give back to others.  The word community has come up frequently over the last few weeks at Theology Pub  as well.  Community is certainly what attracts me to and keeps me coming back to the church I grew up in.  It's a familiar context in which I know what being Christian "looks like."  One question i ask myself is how to do I create circumstances or point out opportunities to be a part of the church community and break away from labels? At the moment, itt feels very separate.  But I don't know how to always bridge that gap that exists.  For now, I am going to keep ministering in the best way I know how and to be a role model so hopefully some of my excitement for God will catch on.