Chapter 1: Prepwork

I’ll largely be approaching these questions with reference to the preschool classroom that I implement a supplemental literacy curriculum in through a University sponsored national program.  If necessary, I will supplement these reflections with speculation on my future career as an art educator through the experience I’ve gained in observing art classrooms in our field work.

Prepwork: Write about what bothers you

What tensions do you see in your classroom?

-Between your students in school and their lives outside of school?

My preschoolers often find it difficult to accept the rigid formalities of the curriculum that we implement in their classroom.   Our session structure is of greater regularity than they are used to in their normal classroom setting (and home environment as well, I suspect).  Our curriculum requires that they fill specific roles at specific times (reading, small group, circle, choice, recall) while they are used to a more fluid and flexible environment where the schedule responds to fluctuations in moods and resources.

-Between yourself and your administration?

Every element of our session is scripted and our national office provides direction for what they consider acceptable and unacceptable practice.  Meeting the needs of our individual learners is often a balancing act between the national requirements and the needs of our students as we experience them.  Also, I am concerned that our program goes too far in its attempt to expose students to extra vocabulary by trying to squeeze too much seated work into our relatively short sessions, possibly crossing over into developmentally inappropriate practice.

-Between your educational background and the curriculum?

One of the great attractions of art education for me as I plot my future course as an educator is the experiential nature of students learning in this discipline.  While I love literature and writing (my B.A. is in English), I feel that the balance in our public school curriculum has gone out of whack—too far toward the more easily demonstrable gains that can be found in book learning while denying our students more fundamental needs to see, imagine, and create.  In certain respects, I feel that the curriculum that I’m presently implementing corrects an opposite imbalance to the one I’ve just described, one that I’ve observed in a lot of preschool classroom: too little structure and a lack of an enriched learning environment.  I’m glad to have been enabled by my program to improve these deficits; however, I also feel that the program has gone too far away from my students developmental needs in other respects.

Prepwork for Scratchwork:  What Ideas do you have about:

-Student learning?

I feel like our students would receive the greatest benefit from an increased emphasis on opportunities and support for the planning and reflection stages of the learning process.

-Curriculum?

These are things that I currently try to scaffold by including extra pre-correct/expectation setting into our session plans, but the way that the plans are designed now, this necessitates even greater periods of sitting/passivity from the students.  I wish our curriculum viewed student learning in a more holistic manner, rather than putting emphasis on literacy/vocabulary.

-Teaching strategies?

I’m interested in providing the students with routines and materials that engage their imaginations as part of the planning and recall processes.  I’d like to incorporate more drawing and descriptive tools as well as more opportunities to plan and recall throughout our lessons.

-Evaluation or grading or reflection?

This is where I need the most help.  Evaluation procedures are difficult to standardize in early childhood.   Mostly they are based on subjective, anecdotal teacher/observer reports.  Broadly, I would expect incidences of conflict to go down and more self-directed time at a single activity, but I am unsure of how to measure these improvements.

-Subject matter?

Ideally, I’d like to see art/visual literacy targeted and integrated into our curriculum.  I feel that visual literacy is at least as important as verbal literacy (especially given our culture’s technological advancements over the past century) and might even be something of an intermediary for early learners as they seek to abstract information into written language.

-The culture at large or the culture of the school?

There’s a large gap between the curricular goals and practices of the classroom teachers and my program’s supplemental activities.  I’d like to see more coordination and outreach between us.  In the culture at large, I’d like to see a much greater emphasis on early childhood teacher training/education and a professional wage to match higher expectations.

Prepwork for Bridgwork

I’ve been through my program’s extensive training regimen a number of times now.  They cite the theory and statistics that guide their practice but I might want to delve more deeply into why they focus on particular practices to the exclusion of others.  In order to do that, I’d probably need to get in touch with some of the administration in the national office.  I’ve worked with a number of early childhood teachers and I could survey/pick their brains about their classroom practices and how they’ve arrived at them.  Further, I’m narrowly familiar with research in the field and I could continue to expand my knowledge base by searching journals and speaking with locally available researchers/professors.

Prepwork for Headwork

-Who are you to be doing this research?

I am in my fourth year with the program, having worked two years with it as an undergraduate and then returning after four years to a position with it as a graduate student.  The program went through significant curricular overhaul in the period of time that I was away from it and I’ve had the opportunity to observe its practice and effects in both modes.  Further, over that time, I’ve implemented the program in three different classrooms and observed a number of other early childhood classrooms in my time as a substitute teacher.

-Where did your own ideas/strategies come from?

In my time as a substitute teacher, I learned to draw from the spectrum of classroom and behavior management strategies and match my teaching to the needs of the learners I was presented with each day.  In considering the needs of these learners and reflecting on my experiences in an early childhood setting, I began to suspect connections between deficiencies in these programs (too little structure, too much structure, the wrong kind of structure, etc) and the academic habits of these older learners.

Prepwork for Legwork

-What would count as evidence?

Long-term behavioral and academic improvements and improvements in students’ self-concept would be the ultimate indicator of success for changes in the early childhood setting.  But short-term, a decrease in classroom conflict (between student & student; between teacher & student) and an increase in curricular compliance (students engaged and on-task with curricular goals) would indicate positive change.

-How do you as a teacher create data sources (journal, plan book, notes to parents, etc.)?

Journals, evaluation forms, and interviews documenting my team’s experience in the classroom, the experience of the classroom teachers, and parent’s impressions of academic and behavioral changes might serve as data sources.

-What among your students’ records, materials, and class work constitute appropriate data?

Planning and reflection journals could be kept and evaluated to document student engagement with new curricular goals, but outcomes would have to be based on observation, rather than these types of data.

Prepwork for Eyework

-Short-term problem from last day and solution

I had to reschedule a meeting that had been canceled due to the weather.  I sent a text message to the members of my team indicating that the meeting had been canceled and included information about the broadest stretch of time that I had available in my schedule for the coming week and asked my team members if they had any free time that coincided with the space of time indicated.  I then waited for responses from all team members, chose a time that worked for everyone and sent a follow up text scheduling our make-up meeting.

-Long-term problem from last year and solution

Over the past year, I have struggled to define my artistic aspirations as I move toward becoming an art educator.  I have taken courses required of an art educator (drawing, 3d design, fibers, etc) and I’ve also followed my inclinations toward particular formats (extra ceramics and web development).  In each medium, I’ve invested myself in the projects given by the instructor and tried to match my artistic thinking and temperament to the mediums in order to create effective works.  Those mediums that appeal to me more conceptually and viscerally along with the feedback that I’ve received from my instructors and peers have led me toward ceramic and multimedia works.

-Compare approaches

Both involved defining a set of data drawn from information readily available to me (my schedule; my past interests) and then offering or comparing that data against feedback and a narrowed set of information (team member availability; my investment/feelings of success in a medium).  I think all studies begin with a hypothesis/hunch, which is the result of experience or direct observation of a potential for change.  It is then up to the researcher to follow through by making the variables explicit and establishing a means by which to validate or invalidate their hypothesis.  This is similar to our efforts in any problem solving situation in that we attempt to solve our problems as well as we can with the information that we have; if we find that we’re unable to solve the problem, then we must seek new information by which to proceed and continue until a suitable change is perceived.

Prepwork for Homework

My biggest goal would be to create change in my program curriculum and create a less stressful and more rewarding experience for the teachers, students, and colleagues involved with the program.  I’d imagine that a thorough study capable of creating that kind of influence would also result in a publishable article.

Prepwork for Footwork

-Strengths

I have a very strong relationship with my local supervisors, my team, and my classroom teachers.  I also have very good relationships with many early childhood teachers and excellent personal, professional, and community support systems here in Columbia.  I have a strong background in writing (a degree in creative nonfiction writing).

-Constraints

I am already aware of limitations in flexibility from the national office of our program.  There is not much time left this school year to propose, implement and track changes.  Even if I were able to propose and create a study for changes in the coming school year, I suspect that it would be difficult to create reliable, replicable data measurements that could be retried and generalized.

Prepwork for Deskwork

As an undergraduate, I developed a set of study habits that have served me well as a student: note/flashcards where information needs to be chunked, quickly referred to, and/or memorized; visual organizers for writing and conceptual study tasks; and, a habit of collecting more information than will be needed.  I’m just now learning to incorporate some of the skills I developed as an office manager into those academic habits: spreadsheet based flowcharts, an integrated electronic calendar system, and—an arcane, but strangely effective habit for me—a legal pad to-do list.  I believe all of these skills/habits will serve me as a researcher as well.

Prepwork  for Homework

My biggest concern regarding my writing process is a tendency to overwrite: an excessive attention to detail often causes me to slow down too much and not get to my points in a timely manner.  I need to continue to strive to write both concisely and efficiently and I think this is especially important in research-based writing where utility is probably more important than style or entertainment.    My past writing experience ranges from a variety of academic tasks (essay, proposal, etc), to a lot of work-shopped personal memoir, to business tasks (memo, reference, instructional).