...and somewhere hearts are light.

I teach in Mudville.  No, that’s not the name of my community – it’s the name of my classroom.  You’re familiar with Mudville, aren’t you?  No, I don’t mean my classroom, I mean the literary setting for the classic baseball poem Casey At The Bat.  Mighty Casey?  The Mudville Nine?  Sheesh, didn’t your parents love you enough to read classic stories to you?  My apologies.

Back to Mudville (the room).  When I left my longtime classroom to become our building’s Title I teacher I moved into a place known as the “Lit Lab”.  “Lit” being short for “literature”…of which there was plenty…collecting dust on shelves.  Job number one was to get that literature off of shelves and into classroom libraries.  Job two was to come up with a new name.  Catchy alliteration aside, Lit Lab held little meaning to kids and made no sense once the literature left the location.

Most of the kids who visit my room find school very difficult and not very enjoyable.  I wanted the name of my classroom to be intriguing, inspiring, unique, and fun.  I should stop calling it “my” classroom; I share this room with a fantastic fleet of paraprofessionals, so I wanted a name that could reflect the teamwork that occurs every day inside its walls.  It took several months, but when I Love To Read month came along with a superhero theme our room’s name came along with it.  We became…The Bat Cave.  Batman and the Bat Girls.  The Caped Crusaders of reading achievement.  I even had a Batmobile (thanks to my blown Achilles I got to spend a couple of months wheeling around on a knee scooter).  Suddenly kids were laughing and smiling because they “got to” go to the Bat Cave instead of “having to” go to the Lit Lab.

A new year brought a new name.  I read Casey At The Bat last spring on the MN Twins Opening Day and instantly realized that Mudville, the town Casey played in, was going to be our new name.  My para team could still be the Bat Girls, referring to baseball bats this time.  Kids could learn a thing or two about classic literature.  The name Mudville is kind of funny, meaning we still got smiles and chuckles from kids while they got used to the new name.  And every kid in school, every kid, knows where Mudville is, even though most kids never use the room.  I daresay there are not more than one or two other locations in the school that kids know so well.

Moral of the story?  Find ways to have a little fun in school.  I’m pretty serious about making kids get serious about learning to read but not so serious to bypass opportunities to make my job, and the kids’ job, a little more enjoyable.  Fun doesn’t have to come in explosive and loud forms; I posit it’s the subtle moments of fun that create the strongest opportunities to connect with kids.  A quick joke, a gentle tease, or an interesting name above the door of a classroom bring smiles to faces, relax bodies, and open pathways for learning.

Who says there’s no joy in Mudville?

The Best Awful Day

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve looked back on a day and decided it could never be surpassed in its totality of awfulness.  Life, being fair and just with her ups and downs, finds ways to prove me wrong again and again….and again.  Funny thing about Life, though – she seems to revel in unpredictability more than punishment, proven yesterday (Saturday) as she pieced together what was, as of Friday evening, sure to be this week’s version of the worst day ever.

Daughters 1 and 2 are both volleyball players.  When I was school-aged, volleyball season came around once a year, in the fall, for a couple of months.  At some point between those school days of mine and these school days of now, Life decided one volleyball season wasn’t dreadful enough for those of us who aren’t fans of the sport; now we have a spring volleyball season, too!  Wait, disclaimer: I do like the sport, and can even enjoy watching two skilled teams play each other.  Watching unskilled play?  Nauseating.  Back to Saturday…

Daughter 2 had a tournament with her 6^th grade team.  Her mom coaches Daughter 1’s team and has been at volleyball tournaments every weekend for a month; to give Mom a weekend off I agreed to be the driver for Saturday’s tournament.  All ingredients were in place for “worst day ever” status – the weather was predicted to be beautiful as we sat inside, the tourney site was two hours away so getting up early was a must, the tourney schedule had the potential to last until 7:30 p.m., and did I mention I’d be watching little girls play bad volleyball all day?  Just for fun Life took away all hopes of productivity and/or distraction by putting the tourney at a school with password protected WiFi (which we discovered shortly after arrival), meaning when I wasn’t watching my daughter play I had little choice but to watch all the other daughters play.  Bad volleyball, in case you’d forgotten.  As I arrived back home – at 10:30 p.m.!!! – I reflected on the awful, awful day and realized…..I couldn’t think of anything that was awful at all.

We had a beautiful morning drive, half of which was through a piece of Minnesota neither of us had ever seen.  We heard songs we loved and songs we hated and even a few we agreed on.  We visited for stretches and rode in silence at times, either way enjoying the rare chance to be just the two of us.  Hutchinson, our destination, was a beautiful city.  We ate lunch at a sub shop with outdoor seating which we took full advantage of and had another great conversation between mouthfuls and drinks.  To top off our day we stopped at our favorite ice cream chain on the way home for the tastiest supper of the week.

The tourney itself was long but I will save my rant about the utter ridiculousness of today’s youth sports for another time…and despite sitting through 10 hours of bad volleyball I came away feeling extremely thankful I had the opportunity to be there.  My daughter’s team played better and better with every game, their coach did a wonderful job of putting team play and individual playing time ahead of winning, and the atmosphere surrounding the tourney was much more positive than I expected - respectful coaches, cheering fans, and dozens of girls having a really good time.  The best part of the whole thing?  The smile on Daughter’s face when she stood tall and delivered a serving streak to seal a win and her goal of bringing home a medal.  Throughout the day we talked between games about leadership and grasping the moment and intensity and working with a team and what it takes to reach goals - the sort of stuff that parents and sports are supposed to teach kids.  The smile on her face was for the win – the look in her eye was the realization of new growth as a player and person.  A very proud moment for both of us.

Daughter 2 wasn’t alone in learning Life lessons on a long Saturday.  Shame on me for judging a day with my little girl as a punishment or potentially awful.  Shame on me, and perhaps many of us, for doing the same thing too often – writing off a day before we even live it.  Bad days are as inevitable as good days, but who are we to judge which is which before the sun comes up?  And even if we do hold judgment until darkness falls maybe we can find some diamonds and pearls sprinkled amongst the happenings of even the most awful of days.  If joy can be found nestled inside 10 hours of bad volleyball it can be found anywhere.

Life, you sly lady, thank you for saving the “worst” day of the week for my daughter and I.  I can’t wait to have another one.  But would it kill you to send some rain the day of the tourney instead of the day after next time?

Creating An Effective Title I Program

I participated in a Twitter chat today; been wanting to try that since joining the Twitter world.  The topic of the chat was education.  In the course of answering questions I made mention of some “creative scheduling” that allows our Title I team to provide maximum support to struggling students.  Several requests for an explanation of said schedule followed my statement.  Explaining our Title I structure in 140 Twitter characters seemed impossible – blogging about it seems logical.

At Fairview Elementary in Mora, MN, we use an Integrated Services Delivery Model (ISDM) to support our at-risk K-2 students in reading and math.  ISDM is a concise way of saying our Title I and Special Education teachers and paraprofessionals work alongside classroom teachers in classrooms to provide academic support to students who are at high risk or some risk for academic struggle according to fall, winter, and spring benchmark assessments.  In short (which is kind of a given after the previous unending sentence) we push-in to classrooms to give kids help rather than pull kids out of rooms.  What we do in rooms varies between classrooms and grade levels, but most often the class is divided into Guided Reading groups, Daily 5 stations, math centers, or some other system of arranging the whole into parts.  While the majority of our day is spent with kids in classrooms, we do have a 30 minute block of pull-out time for each grade level (called WIN time) for reading, and a 20 minute block of pull-out for math in grades 1 and 2.  We have used this model for approximately five years in our building.  

In the months leading up to my transition to Title I Lead Teacher two years ago I had some ideas about how to improve efficiency and execution of intervention delivery, but I didn't want to radically change a program that was already working quite well.  Through collaboration with grade level teams, administrators, the existing paraprofessional team, and colleagues whom I trust to give me honest and well-thought input, I was able to get a feel for the Title I likes, dislikes, hopes, and dreams that were pulsing through our building.  I didn't want the program to be "my" program; I wanted, and still want, it to be our school's program, our staff's program, and ultimately, our students' program.  Through conversation with stakeholders and analysis of responses a slightly new Title I program was born.

The first change made to our model was scheduling our support staff to grade levels.  Rather than move Title and SPED teachers and paras between grade levels we created a schedule that allows for a teacher/para team to work exclusively within one grade level.  This allows us to become very intimate with the grade level curriculum, cuts down on planning time so our lessons can be planned more carefully, and, most importantly, we have become experts in the developmental abilities of the kids we constantly work with.  This schedule works perfectly for reading and almost perfectly for math – we do end up having to jump between grade levels a little bit to provide math support for all.  This innovation has been popular with classroom teachers who see us as co-teachers rather than helpers.

Our ISDM model provides support to all grade levels but it does not provide equal support to all.  Our staff philosophy encourages proactive thinking vs. reactive thinking; we want to solve problems before they become problems.  While working through the task of scheduling grade level specific interventionists we made sure our youngest students got the most support.  Our K students get far more support, in both minutes and bodies, than do our grade two students.  This is only year two but we already see signs of success – the current group of high-risk first graders is fewer and less at-risk than last year’s first graders.  We are hopeful and confident we will see a strong group of second graders next fall...because if we don’t the second grade teachers are going to be slightly miffed after listening to two years of promises that less help for them now would lead to less needs later.  Our second grade teachers deserve much respect for sacrificing support minutes in the name of vision and teamwork.

So how do we provide all of this grade level specific, front loaded support?  First, we have a superb network of classroom teachers, department teachers, and paraprofessionals who work their tails off every single day to support students at all levels.  Next, we put the right people in the right places as efficiently as possible.  Last year we used two Title teachers, one SPED teacher, and three Title paras to provide ISDM support.  This year we turned a Title teacher into two paras (yes, we do know magic...and we're pretty darn good at it), so we have one Title teacher, two SPED teachers, and five Title paras delivering ISDM interventions.  We also have an hour of support from our specialist teachers (art, library, etc.) every day; these folks all work with K students as a part of our early intervention focus.  We squeeze every last minute out of our day by scheduling classroom sequence by locale so transitions between rooms are minimized.  By not pulling kids out of rooms we save dozens of minutes of travel time every day.  Our Title preps are at the very beginning and end of each day when classroom instruction in reading or math is minimal.  We are in classrooms up until the first minute of our lunch break or prep and we return immediately after the final minute of each.

As mentioned earlier, we do have some 20 or 30 minute pull-out sessions during the day called What I Need (WIN) Time.  Kindergarten WIN time occurs in the classroom; one support teacher or para goes into every room while one of our specialists takes a small group of students (on a rotating basis) out of every room for some extra time at their specialist classroom.  Kids in the room are working in a small group with a teacher or para on reading or math skills or enjoying some developmentally appropriate free-choice time.  Reading WIN Time for grades one and two is a bit different.  For each, the Tier 3 (high-risk) kids and the top achievers leave the classroom for instruction at their level while the bulk of the class stays with the classroom teacher for leveled instruction.  Math WIN time for these grades sees only the high-risk kids leaving the room; as much as we’d like to we just haven’t been able to swing extra math instruction for our highest mathematicians.

So, that’s the structure of our support model….but structures don’t get kids reading or counting.  It’s what goes on within this structure that is a marvel to behold.  It can't be said enough - the success we've seen from our ISDM model is the result of teamwork by the people invested in the success of our students.  Luckily for our students the people on our building's team are talented, dedicated, and effective.  Come read again and find out how we help students WIN their battle against reading, how much growth our students have shown with a little help from their PALS, and what really does go on in the room known as Mudville.  Thanks for reading.

The Blog About Nothing

“People who have lives don’t blog.”  I didn’t believe that statement for a long time, thinking that effective blogging depends on wise time management.  Two weeks have passed since my last blog post – it’s really hard finding time to blog in the midst of a busy life.  So tonight I write a post with zero focus and even less forethought while enjoying the final minutes of a day in the life.

Golden State is playing without Steph Curry in game two of their playoff series with the Rockets.  They are on pace for 130 points.  Houston, you have a problem. (GS did win, but "only" scored 115)

Why does our society thrive on mimicry?  Everyone at the Oracle is wearing a yellow t-shirt provided by the Warriors.  I could be wrong but it seems like the Miami Heat were the first organization to give everyone the same color t-shirt at home playoff games, now everyone in the NBA does it.  Oklahoma City fans were all wearing white tonight.  Nearly every player has tattoos celebrating their “individuality”.  Suggest school uniforms and people go nuts.  Strange.

What a Monday.  Tough for students and teachers to crawl back into a school building after a warm and summer-like weekend.  I’d love to see a year-round school schedule but wonder how much fun it would be trying to teach on the Monday after 4^th of July weekend. 

“Gotham” finally got interesting again.  Still have a hard time seeing Batman emerge from the scrawny teeny-bopper playing Bruce Wayne.  In fact, most of the good-guy actors are pretty lame – the villains are carrying this thing.

Had to water my garden before bed.  Got a pepper crop started, both bell and assorted hot peppers.  Can’t wait until they can go in the ground.  In the house for now…on my dryer. #gardeninginthecity

The MN Wild are about to win a playoff game.  This would be much more exciting if, you know, I cared.  Playoff hockey is intense, yes, but watch 10 minutes of hockey and very little happens that really affects the outcome of the game.  Much ado about nothing.  Kind of like watching NASCAR on ice.  There, I’ve now offended hockey and racing fans.

Laundry is done for the evening.  Not sure how a single guy can pile up so many dirty clothes.  My daughters aren’t around very much.  I re-wear clothes quite a bit (wait, do my co-workers read this??).  I wash large loads when I do wash.  Maybe the dirty piles would be smaller if I washed more than once a month.  Nah.

Good grief, would the rain stop falling on Target Field so I could finish watching the Twins game?  They finally start scoring a bunch of runs and the skies open up.  Their new guy from Korea shouldn’t have hit his homer so high into the air.

Maybe it’s not life that gets in the way of blogging…perhaps it’s too many TV channels.