I cannot believe how quickly time flies by (when you're having fun AND you're super busy!). Since my first year teaching (what!) has come to an end, I am left here reflecting over the last 9 months and pondering about the upcoming months and school year. When everyone said that your first year will fly by, it seemed like such an abstract statement since I had never experienced anything like this year before. But it did fly by and my, what an amazing journey it was, which I feel excited and privileged to have had.
As a first year teacher, who was also helping to launch a new dual language program at our school, I certainly felt an enormous amount of pressure to be successful and to provide my K students the most authentic, immersive language learning (and content learning, of course) experience possible! One of the most important things that I can say and reflect upon is how important it was for me to use the resources available (i.e., the internet & my colleagues!) to search for, find and adapt activities for learning that I could utilize. Using search engines to find Spanish poems (and being selective about which poems I believe would be the most beneficial), along with using sites such as Pinterest, I was able to gather ideas and implement them in the way I felt most appropriate. Reflecting on this I realize the importance of seeing ideas from seasoned educators and finding ways to adapt and implement them!
Although sometimes the pressure and stress felt overwhelming, these tools allowed me to realize (1) I am not alone and (2) there are SO many great ideas out there. I also decided that because I knew my kids best and what their needs were, I would need to take what I had learned as a Kindergarten student in Venezuela meshed with my academic experience in the U.S. and my personal family life experience growing up Latina in the U.S. to create an overview of how to teach literacy in Spanish and integrate it with science, social studies and mathematics. Coming into such an innovative and progressive school helped me in this journey. Our Kindergarten team teaches in thematic units, which I now realize is such a powerful way to teach all the standards and content, while not leaving out important subjects such as science and social studies. By integrating all the subjects to thematic units (which the English side teacher was also doing), the children were able to find fluidity and continuity between the two classes, the content and the learning experiences.
Finally, I've also realized how crucial it is for the English side and the Spanish side teacher to have a close working relationship, because I believe, the majority of the success of our program this year was based on that relationship. The other teacher and I would coordinate before every unit to discuss what we were each doing with what group of student (our morning group or our afternoon group), we would discuss everyday what we were doing/what we did with each group and how it went and we would make sure we didn't repeat any lessons (but rather, added on and provided students with different activities aimed at reaching the standards we were working on). I truly believe that this not only helped our sanity (so we were not repeating lessons and things of that nature), but it also demonstrated a coordination and teamwork model for the students, who undeniably saw how closely we both worked!
Overall, I am so grateful for the incredible first year I have had! I feel privileged to be at a school where our Principal allows (and actually encourages) teachers to be creative, innovative and authentic in their practice, while still adhering to standards and what needs to be covered/taught. I have learned a lot and continue to learn a lot and gather new ideas, and am excited for the road ahead as I enter into my second year of teaching Kindergarten!
Happy Summer Everyone!
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