This is an archive of some teaching moments. It includes video I use for professional development purposes as well as documentation of student learning and reflection.

Writing about Teaching

On January 14th, 2016 I had the privilege of attending the Leadership Metro Richmond; Lora M. Robbins Speaker Series. My reflection on this professional development activity can be found on the blog post, Relationship: The Stealth Reform.

On March 11th, 2016 I was the moderator of a Panel on the influence of brain science on early childhood teaching and learning. My reflection from this activity is highlighted in the post, What we know and are able to do: The future of the NBPTS.

On April 19th, 2016 I had an opinion piece on Richmond Public Schools published in Style Weekly magazine. The piece was title, Make Richmond’s Schools the Cornerstone of our Local Wealth-Building Process.

In honor of Teacher Appreciation week I wrote a poem for my friend and colleague titled: You teach, Teach.

This post, The Next Evolution in Professional Development: Timeless Learning highlights why teachers need to have more control over their professional development. Published May 8th, 2016

Teacher-Student Interactions

The visual story below documents our introduction to the concepts of sink and float.



Dialogical Reading reading instructional approach.

Emergent Literacy one-on-one instruction using Language Experience Approach

Building a Better Troll Bridge STEM Science activity from December 2015. Students investigate building a bridge with note cards to support plastic bears. Activity integrated math, physics, engineering, and literacy.

Building a better Troll Bridge – 3 bears. #chimboib #Ibschool #stem #ece #prek #headstart #innovation #math #science pic.twitter.com/k9azxyeUUx

— jmholland (@jmholland) December 6, 2015

Introduction to seriation. Students use materials to understand spacial relations and area.

#chimboib intro to proportion & size Small medium large #math #science #prek #ece #earlyed #nbct 3yrs old #ibschool pic.twitter.com/fLjgnwymBD

— jmholland (@jmholland) November 24, 2015

Student illustrated vocabulary from literacy instruction.

@HeadStartgov in #Prek #literacy #geography heavy lifting #chimboIB #teachingis giving students the words #liberty64 pic.twitter.com/btFUHB3wkd

— jmholland (@jmholland) October 2, 2015

I enjoy connecting with people in support of strengthening education for all students. Please reach out through any of these channels.

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email jmholland DOT preknow AT gmail.com

I often call it a choice, but it was really more of a calling. Teaching is what I was meant to do. This approach to my profession provided a strong moral and ethical grounding to my practice which naturally led me to become a teacher leader. Approaching my profession as a calling has supported my decision to become involved in state and federal education policy. It is also why I have become involved in teacher preparation and crafting a positive vision for the future of teaching.

I believe every teacher is the best teacher they can be. And every parent and family is the best they can be. That includes me, both now and when I was a new teacher, but I know I’m far more accomplished and effective now than I was 18 years ago. That’s in part because, when I started, I didn’t have all the information, skills, knowledge and experience I have now.

The same holds true for parents. In order for me to be effective in my job, part of my job is to help families expand their capacity to raise a child that comes into the classroom ready to learn. A solid understanding of human development is one of the most influential factors in parenting and teaching.

Q&A

Began Teaching:  1997

Current Role:  National Board Certified Head Start early childhood educator, providing education services to at-risk 3 – 4 year old children and their families in the Richmond, Virginia public school district.

Q: What had the biggest influence on your decision to become a teacher?

A:  I often call it a choice, but it was really more of a calling.  It’s what I was meant to do.  After six months of substitute teaching mostly high school classes, I lucked out and subbed for a Head Start teacher. A day later she ended up leaving early for her maternity leave.  That opportunity turned into long-term substitute teaching opportunity.  Teaching 3-4 year olds in a Head Start program exposed me to kids who had so many intense needs. I found I had a strong drive to help them progress.

There were kids who didn’t come to school with warm clothes in the winter and others who hadn’t seen their parents in a year or more due to incarceration.  Most lacked a caring male role model.  I realized I could help. These children let me know very quickly what they needed in terms of respect, guidance, humor, and love.

That experience made it clear that I could make a huge difference in 17 lives each year.  Seventeen children and seventeen families.

So, I was driven to go back to school to learn how to be an effective teacher.

Q:What’s your biggest challenge in the classroom?

A:  The lack of life skills the children’s environments equip them with.

All of my students are living in poverty and this effects their life experience, their ability to focus, their nutrition, and their emotional state.  They experience a lot of stress and their personal relationships, home environment, and routines are not stable.

For example, outside of family, many only know hostile relationships with authority figures.  They’ve already been exposed to court and the justice system.  One of my three year-olds hasn’t seen her mom for over a year. Every year, of 17 kids, maybe four of them may have experienced severe tooth decay and lived with constant dental pain.

They have severe attachment issues which can influence development and their readiness to learn.

Q: And how do you manage to teach effectively with such challenges?

A:  I believe every teacher is the best teacher they can be.  And every parent and family is the best they can be.  That includes me, both now and when I was a new teacher, but I know I’m far more accomplished and effective now than I was 16 years ago.  That’s in part because, when I started, I didn’t have all the information, skills, knowledge and experience I have now.

The same holds true for parents.  In order for me to be effective in my job, part of my job is to help families expand their capacity to raise a child that comes to the classroom ready to learn.

I do this through engaging my students parents in their child’s learning and through helping them to understand child development more clearly. A solid understanding of child development is one of the most influential factors in parenting and teaching young children.

One example of this is the Best in Class behavior intervention. It prevents challenging classroom behavior, supports learning and helps at risk children learn the social and behavioral skills necessary for school success.

Q: What method has had the biggest influence on your current teaching style?

A:  The HighScope curriculum has been a corner stone to my approach to teaching. It’s based on extensive research going back 50 years which shows that children learn best when they engage in self directed learning in which they plan, actively engage, and reflect on their experiences. It works well with young kids and it is the same approach I take with my college students.

Q: What was the biggest change you made between your first and second year?

A:  In my first year I mostly tried to imitate what I thought good teaching looked like. I experienced some challenging behavior and many of my learning activities did not reflect the developmental level of my students. I sought support from my preschool program’s social worker. She engaged a highly effective retired teacher, who had taught in the same community, to come observe and offer some advice.  This teacher spent a few hours in my class one day and told me what I needed to hear to be effective. Much of what she told me had to do with culture and understanding my students’ backgrounds. After that, I changed my style of interaction, from my diction to my sentence structure, to more closely reflect the language interactions my students were used to. I still give the same advice to young teachers that retired teacher gave me. That is how many accomplished teachers get that way, through sharing their practice from one teacher to another, one teacher at a time. In my second year, I was much better at getting and holding my students’ attention. I was also better at planning activities that hit the development sweet spot.

Q: What do you want out of a Virtual Learning Community?

A:  I want a community of teachers who are focused on solutions and willing to take on hard problems and questions.  I love that it’s a safe, supportive place where teachers can find teachers like them and find support and validation for one another while also collaborating. I love that it’s a place that nourishes teachers and their practice.  There are already over 110,000 National Board certified teachers and likely just as many methods to leading a student-centered classroom.  It will be fun to explore and move beyond certification.

I’m eager to pursue teacher-led change.

I’d love to take part in live chats and live video chats to see and understand what other teachers’ solutions look like in their classrooms. Like I said, that is how we learn, teacher to teacher.

Teaching can be both a very isolated and challenging profession.  And, with three million teachers in America, who spend their days communicating more with children than peers, it;s often hard to develop an identity around the profession.

The act of writing and telling a story of you and your classroom builds your identity.  It feels good to listen to peers’ stories, too.  It’s helpful to understand my position, opinions and experience relative to my peers.  We all want affirmation and validation around the work we do every day.

John Holland, Ph.D., NBCT, is a Head Start teacher and frequent guest lecturer with the Mount Holyoke Masters of Arts in Teacher Leadership program. He has dedicated has career to serving his community’s neediest and youngest school children as a preschool teacher of 3- and 4-year-olds from Richmond, Virginia’s toughest neighborhoods. John represents the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards as a #TeachStrong Ambassador and he is a thought leader of the Center for Teaching Quality where he has helped to craft a hopeful vision for the future of education. We believe strongly in cultivating teachers’ active leadership, not merely their voice or engagement. Teacher leadership does not come at the expense of administrators and policy leaders. But it ensures that those who teach students and work most closely with them and their parents can craft innovative solutions to complex problems of teaching and learning, now and in the future. Through our thought leadership, CTQ also works to articulate the promise of systemic change to help all stakeholders embrace the necessity of reforms that are comprehensive and wide-reaching (beyond the confines of an individual school or school district).

Meeting these outstanding teachers was really a treat made possible by the supporting organization The Center for Teacher Quality. In attendance were three State teachers of the year, including Bob Williams (Alaska), Marguerite Izzo (New York) and Cindy Rigsbee (North Carolina), one of the top three NTOY finalist for 2009. There were also young forward thinking teachers like Julianna Dauble from the Washington New Millenium Initiative (NMI), Zachary Rupp and Isabella Campos-Woytek Denver NMI, and Ben Crosby of the Bay Area NMI. Teacher Ambassadors Patrick Ledesma (2009 Classroom Fellow) and Jon Eckert (2009 USDOE Washington Fellow) and NBCTs like Nina Daye and Sarah Henchy. There was a mixture of seasoned professionals including Susan Graham, Marsha Ratzel, and Ernie Rambo. There were some prototypical teachers from the future like Lori Nazareno, one of group of teachers who began a teacher led school in Denver CO., Kristoffer Kohl a teacher/data strategist from (NMI Las Vegas), and Heather Wolpert-Gawron, a middle school teacher near L.A who teaches English with 21st century online and face to face tools including the World of Warcraft. Ariel Sacks, a fantastic blogger and forward thinking teacherprenuer as well as a contributor to Teaching 2030, along with Cindy Rigsbee and myself were there to relate our work back to the efforts of the TS2030 team.

A new school year is beginning for many preschoolers of all ages in the next few weeks. There are some steps that parents can take to make sure their children know they want their child to have a good year and be successful. There are three ways that a parent can be involved with your child that will help them know you care about their learning. The three keys are communication, participation, and follow-through. There are several ways you can do all of these things.

Communication:
Please be available for your child’s parent-teacher conferences and/or home visits and parent involvement nights. These are opportunities for you to have in-depth, face to face communication with your child’s teacher.

Infant/Toddler Caregivers depend on parents communication each day as a way to address your child’s rapidly changing needs.

There are also many less formal ways to communicate with your child’s teacher. You can send a note, call during non-instructional times, or stop by before or after school. It is always best to schedule to meet a teacher but teachers will always try to accommodate your needs.

Participation:
If you can volunteer in your child’s classroom, please do. If your child can say, “That’s my mommy!” to their class they will feel important. If you even have a spare 10 minutes, please stop by your child’s class and make that connection with your child, their friends, and their teacher. If you know your child’s schedule you can ask them about specific parts of their day. This is especially important with Infants/Toddlers.

You can also participate by helping the class at home by preparing materials (cutting out shapes, etc.), by helping your child with their homework, and by reading to your child every night. Finally, you can help your child learn by taking your child to cultural events and public parks around the city on weekends and after school.

Follow-through:
It is important that you and your child are able to fully participate in the class by completing and returning all forms and paper work your child brings home. This type of communication and participation is extremely important. There are often additional permission slips, after school activities, and learning opportunities that you will want to know about.

If your child will miss school, contact the school so that your child is not marked as an unexcused absence. Finally, when your child tells you something about school that concerns you, contact your child’s teacher with an open mind and an attitude of cooperation. You and your child’s teacher can be most effective at helping your child learn when your child knows you are on the same team.

Hopefully I can do a little of that here at EmergentLearner.

Here is my first statement of what needs to be said, pre-k is a social justice issue. It is important. It is important in a life or death kinda way for many kids. That importance increases the farther down the financial food chain you are.

If you are a person who works for a person, who bought a share in a company, that has over a million employees, (Walmart, McDonalds, Target) chances are, you need pre-k for your kids. If you are going to work whack hours, for little pay, and still try to give your child all the love they deserve, you probably need some help.

My suggestion? Hey fortune 500 company, if you employ more minimum wage wage employees than a small country you should be investing some of your 500, lets say maybe 3 out of your 500 hundred that makes you a Fortune, in local pre-k programs for access and quality improvement. Whether it is training, facitlities, expansion, I can guarantee that somebody who works for you has a kid who needs pre-k. Of course, you might support yourself out of some future employees but, is that such a bad thing? No, probably won’t happen. As Renee Moore has paraphrased from the bible, “The poor you will have with you always.” Something like that will never happen, unless someone says it.

Go on, say it.

Pritzker points out that public pre-k is an easy idea to support, especially when a politician is campaigning, but that it is often considered non-essential when state and federal budgets must be cut.

What I found most refreshing about Pritzker’s perspective is the urgency in his writing. I can tell he really believes that investing in children is how to be smart with our money in tough economic times, in the private and public sector. He describes how every day, as an owner of an investment firm he makes decisions about the best way to invest for the long term. And when he turns to philanthropy, he does the same thing by investing in children. He writes,

“…I focus on supporting high quality early childhood health care and education. By betting my resources on very young children, I know I’m making an investment that pays guaranteed dividends with a high rate of return. Our politicians ought to do the same, and we ought to demand it.”

Image: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bloggingstocks.com/media/2008/06/ef-hutton-200a060308.jpg