Educating Esmé (16 page)

Although you may not have much experience, try to do something to stand out during the interview. Work toward as many specialties or endorsements as possible on your teaching certificate. Print your résumé on attractive paper, and feel free to add a photo. If you had a formal student-teaching experience or worked with children in another setting, share a scrapbook that features snazzy bulletin boards, smiling children's faces, thank-you notes from parents, and work samples from children. Dress professionally, but if you add a pin or earrings or a tie in a cheerful color, some small, distinctive touch that shows you can be creative and fun, your potential employer will have an easier time remembering you (“the one with the bumblebee pin
who brought in that photo album”). Most of all, don't take it too personally if you aren't hired right away. Teaching is very competitive, and there are plenty of behind-the-scenes or political reasons why one person is offered a position instead of another. A lot of hiring happens in a rush right before school opens, too, so don't give up hope.

4. Make a time capsule of your intentions.
As a teacher you will become intimately acquainted with the required curriculum. Before you become entrenched in these requirements, find a notebook and keep a running list of what you are
excited
to teach, topics and concepts that you personally feel will be important or fun. From my own list:
Shadows and light. Letter-writing. Harlem Renaissance. Counting money. Difference between fact and opinion. Greek mythology. Solar system. Garden in an old bathtub. Sign language. Practicing handwriting to classical music. Classroom museum.
I also created a long list of books and movies, quotations, general statements and reminders to my “future self”: “Teach children to set their own standards.” “Sometimes the worst behavior can signal a potential within the child.” “Do they know how to answer the telephone politely?” The book can be very loose. You can draw sketches of what your fantasy classroom looks like, or staple in swatches of color that would be nice for walls or curtains. You don't have to fill in all the pages. It's not
an assignment; it's a mental collection of the pieces of your professional dream, a pedagogical hope chest. You may not be able to implement every idea or theme you have written (or at least not all in your first year of teaching), but you may be surprised by how much of what you want to teach may actually be part of what you are
supposed
to teach, or can be creatively integrated into the goals of the general curriculum. Being acquainted with the performance of professional athletes, for instance, may not be a mandate in the curriculum, but it is easy to incorporate into math lessons (probability, percentages, statistics), so if you enjoy talking to kids about sports, write down sports in your notebook. Likewise, children can read lyrics for sight word vocabulary, so if you're a music buff, in it goes!

This little book may become golden to you. You can look at it if you lose track of why you decided to become a teacher, or when you feel that what you have to share has been shanghaied by imposed priorities. You can find inspiration when you are determining what to do next. Looking over your ideas as a whole, you will find indicators of which grade levels you would probably be best suited to teach (finger painting, weather: primary grades; world history, web page design: older kids) and the book will guide you in gathering materials as you prepare your classroom.

Why would you do this, knowing there are so many things that are already expected of you? The agendas you
set have an immediacy that contributes meaningfully to what children need to succeed, sometimes at least as much as guidelines from the state and district. Manners, for instance, may not be a major part of what you are expected to teach academically but may be a glaring part of what you determine would prepare your class for the future. Drama may be a minor part of the curriculum, but you may not want fear of public speaking to stand in the way of the children's success. You may see the national increase in childhood obesity evidenced in your room and decide to integrate more movement or nutrition studies into your day. You know that children need to know more about environmental science and media literacy than other generations may have been taught. You will want to capitalize on “teachable moments,” borne from the organic interests and quesions of the children.
Your
class,
your
children. Own that idea, and take personal responsibility for the children's being better off when they leave you than when they arrived, for imparting what you know to be useful and beautiful and healthy. Then you will always teach from your heart, not just tick things off of a list that someone else has given to you.

5. Build an organized collection of strategies, units, and ideas.
As you come across articles, lesson plans, management techniques, or other inspiration, put them in file
folders labeled thematically and organized alphabetically. These files should cover a variety of topics: Open house. Groundhog Day. Classroom management. Special needs strategies. Bulletin boards. Fishy fun. The Colonies. The Aztecs. Place value. Science experiments. Reptiles. Poetry. Martin Luther King. Astronomy. Absolutely anything that might possibly be useful in the future should go into a file, and the collection should be kept in easy reach. You can find information to fill your files by subscribing to professional magazines (a few solid picks are
Instructor, Learning, Mailbox
, and
Teacher
) and exploring well-established online teacher communities such as Educator World, Teachers.net, Teachers Helping Teachers, Teaching Tolerance, and Teaching Is a Work of Heart. Additionally, you can use the Internet to look at other teachers' classroom home pages, which will give you great ideas on topics such as decorating your classroom and communicating with parents. Your head will spin with all of the lesson plans, units, helpful hints, and general support available online, shared and created by teachers. Organizing these ideas out of the gate will make a huge difference in your efficiency in finding, using, and sharing all of these marvelous materials.

6. Read aloud to the children in your charge every single day, regardless of age or grade level.
There's a lot on every teacher's plate and only so many hours in a day, and some
educators feel they just don't have the time for reading to students. Others may find it awkward, reading aloud to children who are old enough to read to themselves. Cast these fallacies and fears away! In a world of educational theories, read-aloud is a fact, the proven way to guarantee a forward academic trajectory. The benefits of the practice, well documented in Jim Trelease's
Read-Aloud Handbook
, suggest that we don't have the time
not
to do it. The recommended minimum is twenty minutes, but why be chintzy? For older children, having multiple copies of a book so they can follow along while you read increases their exposure to print and allows them to absorb the mechanics and nuances of language and story instead of stressing over the task of decoding. Gathering your class together to enjoy a book at a consistent time in a cozy environment creates a community of readers and instills listening and comprehension skills that will impact every other area of the curriculum. The best reason of all to read aloud, though, is that sharing a book that you love just feels wonderful, and you deserve to feel wonderful every day. Turn on a special lamp, gather everyone around . . . Once you start this ritual, I promise, you'll be looking forward to it at least as much as the children will.

A child's confidence and ability to read directly affects academic performance and opportunity. The more you know about children's books, the more you will be able
to individualize instruction and integrate reading across subject areas. With thousands of children's books released every year and thousands more published in years past, it's a challenge to navigate all of the material available in order to find those that would have the greatest positive impact. My book
How to Get Your Child to Love Reading
will make you an expert in children's literature, and my website,
www.PlanetEsme.com
, will direct you to my blog and others in the joyful “kidlitosphere” community that regularly review and celebrate children's books. Professional magazines like
LibrarySparks
(even if you're not a librarian),
Bookbag
, and
Book Links
offer more ideas on what books to add to your collection and how to bring books to life in a classroom context.

While you are learning about the latest and the greatest in children's literature, you can start rounding up books. This is important. You should not assume that you will be entering an environment rich with print or that the school will offer you the economic resources to develop your collection. Plus, you want a library that belongs to you and that can follow you if you change positions in the future. You can build a decent collection without too much investment through book clubs, garage sales, used bookstores, and library book sales. I and other teachers I have known have worked part time at bookstores, which offered the extra income and employee discounts that allowed us to add to
our classroom libraries. Participating in national conferences such as Book Expo America (BEA), the International Reading Association (IRA), the American Library Association (ALA), the National Association for the Education for Young Children (NAEYC), as well as state and regional reading and library association conferences are often good sources of free material and informative, topical sessions. Conferences can be expensive, but even if you can only afford a pass to the exhibition hall, you'll come away with tons of catalogs, advance reader's copies, great posters, and probably a few new friends.

You can start creating a book collection before you even know what grade level you'll be teaching, and the more you learn about children's literature, the more the titles you discover can be useful regardless of the age of the children. Picture books are often stigmatized as “baby books,” when in fact they contain story structure, figurative language, dialogue, character development—all of the literary elements the children should be acquainted with—in an accessible format for all levels of learners. Children are growing up in an increasingly visual world, and picture books help support the level of visual literacy that the next generation will require, so don't be afraid to use them, read them aloud, show them off, model reading them yourself, and introduce them to older kids who still need and enjoy
what picture books have to offer. Conversely, children also listen at a higher “level” than they read themselves, so you can read aloud chapter books even to young kids (though you should always, always read the book through yourself to make sure the themes and treatment are age-appropriate). If you look for well-written books that inspire possibility, books that make children laugh, books in which children can recognize themselves and feel less alone, you will have a collection that will be useful across the grade levels. If you are still overwhelmed, start with a specific genre within children's literature. Picture book biographies and poetry are types of books that you will be able to read aloud and use, no matter which grade level you teach.

Finally, if you take the time to protect your investments by using fold-on covers for your hardcover slipcovers (I use the twelve-inch Fold-On Book Jacket Cover on rolls from Brodart.com, which fits most books), and clear contact paper on all the paperbacks, you'll be amazed by the difference it makes. Most damage to books happens when they are shoved into backpacks or get wet. Insist that children include a Ziploc gallon-size bag in their school supplies (if you are concerned about a choking hazard, young children can use a pillowcase instead). Any book that is borrowed from your classroom should go into a bag with the borrower's name.

7. Supplement your coursework.
A lot of what a teacher-in-training reads is assigned or from a textbook. Most professors worth their salt try to assign meaningful content, but with an unprecedented number of professional resources available and teachers training in many different areas of focus and expertise, a professor can only go so far. Independently seek out alliances and mentors in print (and put a magazine rack in your bathroom so you will have time to read books of your own choosing!). Titles like
The First-Year Teacher's Survival Kit
by Julia G. Thompson,
The First Days of School
by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong,
Discipline Without Stress, Punishment or Rewards
by Marvin L. Marshall,
The Book Whisperer
by Donalyn Miller,
What Do You Do with a Child Like This?
by L. Tobin, and
Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students by Their Brains
by LouAnne Johnson, as well as works by authors and practitioners like Regie Routman, Madeline Hunter, John Holt, and David Elkind have the potential to inform and transform your practice on a day-to-day basis.

Take at least one extra methods class or workshop in the subject area that you feel least confident or enthusiastic about. While this initially may make you feel like groaning, it will put you in the same position that so many children are in every day: lacking in confidence but with the potential to learn. If you dedicate yourself to the idea
of relearning a subject, you'll be surprised at the different perspective you enjoy. This is a powerful exercise because it's about breaking a cycle, and it's also about your own willingness to continue to learn. Visit the Bureau of Education and Research (ber.org) for dynamic speakers and workshops in your area, many of which will address areas in which you want to improve.

Consider giving attention to less obvious teaching skills, like public speaking and handwriting. Though many teachers have confidence in front of kids, some tend to buckle when other adults are around. You will have to communicate both orally and in writing with fellow teachers, parents, administrators, and other visitors on a regular basis, so strive to master your smaller bugaboos, and you can be fearless enough to teach with your door open, with limited distraction and stress.