I always get excited when following up on our projects’ impact. Whether we are exceeding expectations, identifying challenges to be overcome, or even in the rare case where everything is going exactly as planned, working to improve the quality and meaning of public education Is always fulfilling. However, no report or meeting can ever compare to visiting teachers and students in the classroom.
I recently had the opportunity to visit with one of our Best Practices teachers with her five and six-year-old preschool class. There was one teacher for over 30 students, and as nature dictates, they were some wild and crazy kids.
After observing the morning session, it was clear that this teacher was working hard to include Alma thought strategies in her classroom. And while usually my focus during a classroom visit is on the presence and promotion of critical and creative thinking, local indigenous knowledge, and social emotional well-being, it was overwhelmingly clear on this visit that the teacher needed support with classroom management strategies. How do we use the space in a classroom to our benefit? How do we challenge our faster students and motivate our slower ones? What do we do when every child screams out and answer at the same time? What do we do when no one answers at all? Though our blogs and reports mainly focus on critical and creative thinking, one of the most practical pieces of our training programs is a toolbox of strategies for just these situations.
So on this last visit, instead of refining the pedagogy behind the critical and creative thinking strategies that the teacher was implementing, we got kids moving around the classroom based on the current task and implemented some new strategies on how to ask questions and others on how to develop and share answers. Watching that wild and crazy energy get channeled into fun investigative learning may be my favorite experience when visiting classroom!
Ian McGroarty
Executive Director
Alma Children’s Education Foundation