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.