training weeks

I'm almost done with my second and last week of training (finally!) and so excited to have students on Monday. I'm paired up with a new graduate from good old UW-Whitewater, Michela Feneis. She long term subbed in a preK classroom Spring semester, so has a little experience with four and five year olds (more than me anyway!). I feel like AmeriCorps has me prepared fully for the K-Ready program this summer, and I'm very impressed with the awesome program. Lucky for me, she's letting me take part in making the lesson plans as there aren't really any for us other than a general schedule/ideas of what to do. The four and five year old's days are structured into two parts with the morning focusing on Math and Literacy, and the afternoon orientated around the Madison Schools and Community Recreation department (another great program promoting fitness in young kids around Madison, much needed). The past two weeks we have been getting training in math and literacy teaching as well as conflict resolution training and ESL training (as most of the kids come from non English speaking homes, however my class is not considered a bilingual classroom). Luckily I can speak a little Spanish...and also lucky for me I took Human Development 320 so I know exactly...well, to a certain extent... what to expect of the behaviors and emotions of 4 and 5 year olds.

I'm not sure if you've heard of the STARS program in Madison, but it was started by a Leipold teacher 21 years ago targeting students who were significantly behind due to lack of instruction at home. My classroom is one of two classrooms in the summer program (which has 380 students this year, a record high for MMSD...) that targets students who have tested into the lowest category in their kindergarten screening tests as well as obvious problems in the home. It hasn't really been made clear to us what happens after the first week of instruction, but we do know that for an hour and a half each day the parents of our students will be joining us in the classroom for instruction on how to teach their kids at home (aka teach them basic skills such as recognizing their names). In addition to the parents joining us, social workers will be on staff in our classroom on Monday. Many of these kids come from troubled backgrounds and home lives, so it's awesome to know that we are actually targeting the problem, rather than teaching these kids things that we know they will just go home and neither be reminded of or reinforced. I'm really impressed with the STARS program as well as MMSD and AmeriCorps thus far and think and hope that it will make as big of an impact on the kiddos as I'm expecting.

and so we begin...

After being asked by a former professor, Joyce Hemphill (take her if you get the chance, she's incredible!), to be a guess lecturer next semester in her Human Growth and Development classes on my experiences working for AmeriCorps this summer, I decided it would be a good idea to keep some sort of a journal. I contemplated keeping a journal in a composition notebook, but couldn't find it in myself to sit and physically write something each night, or even weekly. Typing has always been much easier ;) This blog is mostly for my convenience to record memories and experiences and reference to in the future, however I hope you enjoy reading of my experiences in the process.

Every job I have had, essentially, has been in the health care field. Working as a CNA, an EMT, and currently a Pharmacy Tech certainly have not prepared me to work with four and five year olds. After an amazing experience tutoring second and third graders Spring semester, my volunteer placement coordinator suggested I apply for a job teaching through AmeriCorps this summer. This is what I knew of the job: Students are screened in Madison prior to entering Kindergarten in the fall. The students that are red flagged for being significantly behind in many areas necessary for success in Kindergarten are recommended to take a K-Ready summer school program, offered by the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) and AmeriCorps and Schools of Hope (two AMAZING programs). Not really knowing what I was getting into, I decided to give it a shot and get my feet wet. After all, who wouldn't want to spend their summer with a bunch of four and five year olds.

Obviously, I got the job, straying me away from health care for the first time in my life. Cullen reminded me frequently when we would see an extremely annoyed and stressed out (not to mention underpaid) teacher walking around with fifteen little kiddos that certainly that would be the ideal way to spend the summer, right? Let's hope he's wrong this time ;)