professional development

Lately, it seems like I've been inundated with professional development. It has been overwhelming on one hand, but on the other it has been really refreshing. I've always been a life-long learner and this has satisfied that craving within me to learn more about the world and lately more specifically about teaching. I started an online grad degree in Curriculum and Instruction with an ESL specialty a few weeks ago and have enjoyed starting that. I'm just now starting to get a good weekly pace down I feel like so that's helpful as I look ahead to start the school year.

Last week I went to a professional development training that my district put on at their headquarters. It was a Kagan cooperative learning training and I simply loved it. It was all about a better way of keeping kids engaged in learning through a more hands-on, team approach to learning. We practiced many of the structures as teachers ourselves to see how they're supposed to work. Undoubtedly, these structures won't go as well the first couple of times we try them in our classrooms but that's because we're not experts at it yet and neither are the students. One of our instructors gave us the example of having us cross our arms and then telling us to cross them the other way. It takes a bit of thought and doesn't come naturally at first.

My main concern was how I am supposed to incorporate a lot of these structures in kindergarten this year. It seemed like it would be perfect for about 3rd grade and up because a lot of it relies on being able to read. For the little ones though, I'm not sure how I'm going to translate a lot of the activities into something they'll be able to handle. I did order a book with some blacklines that should help me get started. My guess is there will be a lot more activities with pictures as opposed to words and hopefully that will go well.

This coming week I have more professional development on Wednesday and Thursday on the subject of classroom management. I thought it would be good to go over as I'm starting a whole new grade level and classroom management is going to be pretty key to my success, which it always is anyways but particularly when you're dealing with really young students it's even more important. I'm looking forward to it as one of the instructors was one of the same ones I had this past week and he was a really good-natured teacher and made it fun and engaging. They focus on procedures a lot, which is something I really need to work on for this coming year. I'm going to need to plan out how I'm going to have the students do every activity so it can run as smoothly as possible.

I'm hoping to also go into our school a couple of days this week ahead of time just to get a feel for my classroom and start getting stuff organized and all the books unpacked. I'm curious to see what this year will hold for me. Everyone says I'll be good at it but I certainly have my reservations. Guess you never know until you try though, do you? Another kindergarten teacher at the training this past week told me her best piece of advice would be to have patience. This is extremely difficult for me as I've always struggled to have a good amount of patience in the classroom. This will surely be a trying year, but I'm also hoping it will be one of my best years in the classroom yet.