It felt wonderful to be with so many of you at the last CFG meeting. We made two commitments:
1) To visit at least one other CFG member's classroom (or to watch a traveling teacher teach) before the next meeting.
2) To bring our calendars to the next meeting prepared to make concrete plans for more time in one another's classrooms.
Because we shifted last week's meeting, our next meeting is coming up fast! We will meet in a little over a week on November 5th. With conferences this week, that means we'd better start visiting!
If you want some guidance, I'd suggest these first visits following an observer as learner format, where the visiting teacher comes in with his/her own question (i.e.: What accommodations are other teachers making for children who need to move to listen? What kinds of mini-lessons are you using to launch your Readers' Workshop sessions? What language or actions are children using to show they are listening to one another?) and visits to learn more from the teacher s/he is observing. Jotting a quick note to the teacher you visited afterward with a thank you and a 1-2 sentence note about something you learned while visiting or a question you hope to apply to your own classroom can help start a dialogue and can help foster trust for peer observations.
I can't wait to find out what we'll all learn from one another! May the inspiration begin...
“If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract.” -Parker Palmer-
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