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This year I have been fortunate to develop a collaborative teaching partnership with my school's preschool autism teacher, Erin. Two of her students come to my classroom for a portion of the school day and have been doing so since the beginning of the school year. Through our work together, Erin and I have learned a great deal about working with a diverse group of children. Our students are also learning valuable social and academic lessons from one another.  
  

I received notice two weeks ago that a new student, Olivia, would be starting in our class.  I added her name to our “who’s here?” board, our job chart and our name sticks.  All of our students were beginning to wonder…is she ever going to come to school? 

 The Foundation for Child Development recently released a Policy Brief
that insists that it is time that we face facts about Pre-K. Pre-K
can't fix the entire educational system. The report asserts that there
is only so much one initiative can accomplish.

I have taught pre-k for
12 years--a state funded program for 5 years and Head Start for the
past 7 years. In that time, I have found many folks who don’t
see the benefits of Head Start. If they only spent some time in a
classroom they would see its benefits firsthand, but until that
happens, we will have to settle for policy debates like this pot shot
of Obama’s preschool plans from conservative scholars, Douglas
Besharov and Douglas Call in the New
York Times.

Last week we were thrilled to welcome a new student, Ruby, into our classroom community.  The day before Ruby started school, several of my students had the opportunity to meet her during recess.  Aaliyah showed her around our classroom and Julia told her all about what we do in school.  Ruby's mom emphasized that this was a "big girl school," just like the school that Ruby's six-year-old sister Sonya attended.  Ruby seemed a bit skeptical of everything, but she listened to what people had to say and was excited to play with all of the toys we had in the classroom.    
 
When I

I had the amazing opportunity to travel to New Orleans, Louisiana this past week.  I am a part of a small organization called World Beat Connection.  Our mission is to connect with people from other cultures and promote peace and justice through music.  Throughout the week we played a total of 14 gigs, mostly at elementary schools.  What an experience!  From the moment we started playing, I knew this was going to be a life-changing week.  

Praise doesn't pay, according to some researchers. ABC news
just published an article highlighting the work of Dr. Carol Dweck, a
Stanford University researcher who has found that certain types of
praise do not help kids. In fact, it can hurt them. I am sure that many
pre-k teachers would agree. However, the article described Dweck's
study done with hundreds of 5th graders. I think the results would be
different if it was conducted with preschoolers.

I just finished a week
of parent conferences. In every conference I discussed the number of
letters my students recognized, and how many letter sounds they could
produce on demand. Many of my students' parents wanted to know about
their behavior. In all of my conferences, though, I talked with parents
about how they could interact with their kids in ways that would
support literacy development that were fun. These included using magnet
letters, the newspaper, and books.

Read alouds are one of my favorite activities of our school day.  There is nothing quite like a group of three- and four-year-olds sitting in rapt attention trying to figure out what will happen next in a story, making connections between a book and their own lives, or even taking on the perspective of a character from a book.  I primarily use read alouds to teach thematic content (e.g. we read books about grocery stores during our Markets and Food unit), reading comprehension skills (e.g.

I recently got another new student.  Surprisingly, she came from one our kindergarten classes at an elementary school just down the road.  I could sense from the principal and number of specialists I spoke to that school was not easy for Tyra.  The hope was that she could finish out the year in my two-hour a day, four day a week program and then repeat kindergarten next year.