Among other things . . . I think I should begin all my postings with this three word phrase. Narrowing my day down to one task is can be misleading, as it's extremely rare for me to be engaged with just one thing all day.
So, among other things, I have spent a couple of hours these last two days doing something that took me back to my roots.
A third grade teacher was concerned about her students' reading fluency. She and one of the reading specialists approached me about identifying an app they could use so students could record and listen to themselves reading aloud. Matching an instructional need to an appropriate app has become a regular part of my job. This request turned out to be a little bit of a challenge, as I found most free audio recording apps limited in one way or another. I finally settled on Voice Recorder. It's a pretty basic audio recording app that looks like a cassette player. Audio recordings can be saved, renamed, and shared through email and several other options.
As I made my early morning rounds yesterday, I met with the third grade teacher and I not only told her about the app but offered to work with her students. For about an hour yesterday and a little longer today, I sat with each of her students one-on-one, recording them as they read a page from one of their stories. I let them listen privately (headphones) and asked them what they thought they would do differently when they read it a second time. It took some prompting to get specific ideas, but most were able to come up with at least one useful suggestion. Then, they read it again, listened again, and compared their two recordings. With maybe one exception, every one of them read more smoothly and with fewer errors the second time around. There were a couple of students I thought could benefit by a third reading, and I gave them that option. It was wonderful to watch them as their confidence grew.
I don't get to work like this with students very often anymore. There are too many other demands to make this an efficient use of my time, but I was able to carve a couple of hours out of this week's schedule to help out a fellow teacher and remember one of the things I miss about teacher: individual student contact.
This morning I had a 7:45 meeting at one of my schools. Because my two schools are only a few miles from each other, I assumed I would have enough time to attend to an issue at the other school and still make it to my meeting on time. Best laid plans and all that!
I arrived shortly after 7:00 and got into a conversation with a colleague far more interesting than the task at hand. We discovered we had similar tastes in the arts. We compared favorite television shows and music, and if we were so inclined we could have made an interesting Venn diagram. I moved my way toward the back of the school, headed for the library. With only a couple of minor distractions, I got started on a 10-minute job, which of course took more like 30 minutes.
With one eye on my assignment and the other on the clock, I plowed ahead. "Oh, I'm glad you're here," I heard repeatedly as one person after another discovered my unexpected Tuesday presence at my Wednesday/Thursday school. I was suddenly startled by the bell. If students were arriving, my meeting was history. Now it was just a matter of getting to my other school in time to start the day.
While continually motioning the stream of students heading toward me to move to the right, I wriggled my way toward the exit. "Oh, I'm glad you're here," I heard once more. This time it was my principal. They were taking school pictures, and they needed mine taken. I certainly didn't want my picture missing from the year book. And I certainly didn't want to say NO to my principal.
Ten minutes later, I was powering up my computer and getting coffee at my Monday/Tuesday school wondering if anyone had missed me. I was certain that when they realized I wasn't there, they postponed the meeting. Okay, maybe not, but it's nice to feel important sometimes.
