My CFE experience provided me with both great educational opportunities to further my career goals and wonderful memories. On the professional side, I have had a fantastic opportunity to see another approach to my inquiry exploration of classroom management in action. I was able to see a teacher who modeled classroom management through a social and emotional approach. While my teacher supervisor set clear expectations, boundaries, and routines, she also recognized the need many of the students had for social and emotional support and made sure to prioritize the fulfilment of these needs above all else. For example, she opened each day with a temperature check and began each Monday morning with a chance for students to share a highlight of their weekend. She talked to students about recognizing the emotions in their bodies, and encouraged them to share both moments of joy and sad experiences with both her and their classmates. She used gentle language, gave children who were struggling space, and did not force academic expectations when students were not emotionally capable or ready to meet them. On the other hand, she also enforced consequences for children who were struggling, such as stopping PE games when students were out of control, and encouraged students to solve their own problems when possible. Watching her model these techniques, I have come to realize that, to a certain extent, social and emotional learning is not just one tool used to tackle classroom management, but is the center of classroom management. This experience has also enabled me to meet my professional goals of becoming prepared to lead any classroom I may be put in with confidence. By spending time in a primary classroom that contrasts with my practicum experience in a Grade 6/7 classroom, I have learned about resources and books that I can plan lessons around or have available for students, how to run basics of Grade 2 curriculum such as teaching subtraction and doing calendar, the importance of routine for primary classes, some of the unique challenges of primary classrooms such as students being quick to report on the behavior of other students or not yet knowing how to participate in cooperative games, among other related things. I believe that this will help me successfully work in any grade, either as a TOC or a classroom teacher. Luckily, my experience has also provided me with fantastic memories that I will hold dear. Reading with students, especially the most vulnerable, and watching them glow under the individual attention provided wonderful opportunities for me to bond with and get to know them. Watching the students bravely take to the stage and succeed in the talent show filled me with pride. When I talked to them at lunch time or during art time, students often made me laugh, asked questions that made me think, or opened my eyes to a renewed sense of curiosity, as only young children can. I know that I will always fondly remember this classroom as I hopefully embark on a journey of taking many more classrooms of students into my heart as a teacher.

This week, I have had the experience of getting to know and work with many students who are identified as ‘vulnerable children.’ Certainly, all children come to the classroom with their own histories of both joy and pain, their own triumphs and their own challenges. However, for some children, their childhoods are far too prematurely cut off. Sometimes these children make themselves clear and sometimes they are harder to see. I have come to recognize the signs of particular vulnerability in some of the students – the desperation to cling to any adult who shows them attention and care, the haunted look in their eyes and constant bags under their eyes, their downcast heads during times that anyone would think would be filled with youthful delight. Although each event I encountered this week that made me more familiar with these signs filled me with heartbreak, it also motivated me to connect with that child just a little more, to give them just a few more words of encouragement, and to share more smiles and more laughter with them. Reading with them one on one during quiet reading time, for example, provided me with the perfect opportunity to give the child a little of the close proximity to, and individual attention of, a trusted adult that they crave. When I did this for one student and he approached me the next day with the exact same book to read again, I knew that he had gotten something he needed out of the encounter.

All of these events reminded me that the job of the teacher is far more than simply relating curriculum. It is to be the cheerleader for children who need a positive boost, to be the nurse when students are injured, to be a role model for children to learn from, to be the supportive adult for a child who does not have an involved or positive one or even one at all, to be the mentor for students who struggle, to be the cook when children are hungry, and to be the crying shoulder for students when they need one.

Of course, teachers have limits and should listen to them. As much as I may be inclined to, I cannot take the weights of all my students’ lives on my shoulders alone, especially when I am not the extra support in the room who has more time but the only teacher facing twenty or more shining faces, each one with their own needs. That is a perfect recipe for burn-out and I know now that this really is the role I wish to play for my whole life. I must learn to prioritize my own self-care as much as I prioritize my students’ needs or I won’t be able to be the strong and confident example my future students will need.

Keeping this in mind though, I know now that my future classroom will prize empowerment and social and emotional learning as much or even more than it will prize academic studies. For example, it will incorporate things such as daily temperature checks so that students will know they are listened to and cared about. In this way, I hope to learn how to best build a safe space for all of the children who will walk through the school doors and especially for the most vulnerable. Then, no matter what else they are facing in their lives and even if they forget the life cycle of a butterfly or the meaning of Newton’s third law, I may be able to have every student who walks out of my room clinging to two words for the remainder of their lives: I matter.

I am currently spending three weeks in a grade 2 classroom at T.E. Scott Elementary for my Community Field Experience placement. As I have previously considered myself to be more of a primary teacher than an intermediate one but I completed my practicum in a grade 6/7 classroom, this placement affords me the perfect opportunity to further explore my evolving teacher identity. In addition, T.E. Scott was also the site of my practicum placement. Therefore, although every class in a school is unique with its own strengths and challenges, I am able to compare primary and intermediate experiences more directly, independently of any extenuating community or school dynamics. I am hoping that the two contrasting experiences I will gain will help me feel comfortable in any setting as I move forward in a possible TOC role, and perhaps shed light on the type of classroom I see myself leading one day.

 

One week in, and I find myself with more questions on this issue than answers. I have found so far that children on either end of the elementary school divide are ultimately more similar than they are different. They both relish opportunities to learn through hands-on and contextualized experiences, and have a hard time focusing during more top-down style lessons. They both throw themselves into physical activity with enthusiasm but also love the quiet moments in which they are able to truly forge connections with the significant adults and peers in their lives. They both need to be truly heard, and need a teacher who cares as much about how their evening was and how they are feeling in the morning, as they do about what their achievement in mathematics looks like. They need differentiation in lessons, not to be simply slotted into boxes or measured with arbitrary standards, and to be given chances to show their individual strengths. Fortunately, these are all reasons that I entered the profession and so myself more passionate about the challenges of these types of modern classrooms, instead of intimidated.

 

In terms of differences, I have discovered so far that there are things I love about primary classrooms but just as many things that I enjoy in intermediate classrooms. For example, I love the energy of primary students, the strong and immediate importance that teachers still play in their lives, and the focus on open-ended creation and play. I love the small class sizes and the connections that these arrangements afford. However, I also find great fulfillment in helping students navigate their complex social worlds while illuminating the world that exists outside of their frames of reference, teaching lessons that can incorporate issues of social justice and complex topics, and mustering all of my creativity to design lessons that can engage the whole class.

 

Perhaps the answer to this question is that I am suited to the grades right in the middle, so that all of my passions can be fulfilled. Or perhaps the answer is that, wherever I find myself one day, as long as I throw myself into the environment with enthusiasm and value relationship above all else, I will find enough passion and challenge to last me a full and rewarding career.