Earlier this summer, Saint Andrew’s Day School administration provided professional development to teachers in “Responsive Classroom.” This program focuses on creating an environment where the teacher and students feel joyful, safe, and engaged. It has been a wonderful learning experience to collaborate and learn from my colleagues. We’ve grown tremendously as a school especially during these challenging times.
In second grade, we have daily morning meetings and afternoon reflections. During morning meeting, we go over the calendar and do various activities that focus on team building and sharing experiences. It is important for the children to see that school is a combination of learning and social interactions. They get really excited to play games like would you rather or categories. Reflections is our class’ favorite activity to do. During this time, we close our eyes and meditate to reflect on our day. I ask the children to share one thing they learned, one thing that they need to improve upon, and one thing that worked really well. I believe these discussions are a great way for the children to see that they aren’t the only ones that may be struggling with something and be proud of their accomplishments. We understand that we are a family and we are each other’s support system.
This week, I was given a wonderful opportunity to facilitate a discussion with other AIMS teachers about hybrid learning. This is a new format for most schools and it was fantastic to hear success stories and ways that these schools learned from their challenges. It has been a blessing to collaborate and share resources with these individuals. We all agreed that this takes time and we need to be flexible and understand that we may fail. But just like we teach our children, “F.A.I.L” is just our first attempt in learning. We must rely on one another to learn and grow and hopefully prevent others from making similar mistakes. We are passionate about educating children and will do whatever it takes to provide the content and resources that will make our students successful in and out of the classroom.
Having to teach in this new format has brought many challenges but with those challenges came accomplishments. I am glad that I could represent our school and share my experiences with other passionate educators.
Mrs. Jones is the second grade teacher.