Back again. (I hope you sang that in your best Slim Shady voice.)
It's been a minute, or a year or maybe even more. Life gets busy.
I have been teaching 2 classes again this year. This time I am teaching a special 3-day preschool class. It's special because it's almost all returning students from a 2-day class, so somethings are easy, but with changes also come new challenges. My other class is a 2-day class. While I have subbed in the 2-day classes so many times, teaching it full-time with lots of children without previous childcare experience has been another kind of challenge.
The Schedule
Since it's my first blog back in a long time, let's talk where I started at the beginning of the year: THE SCHEDULE. My schedule is pretty wide open and the teachers at our school are in charge of creating their own. The only thing we need to work around is outside time because we share a playground. You would think with only one 30 minute time block it would be easy to figure out, but this schedule was such a challenge for me. We start class at 8:00am, outside time is 9:15-9:45am, then we dismiss at 11:00am. Other things we include are 60 minutes of play time (hopefully uninterrupted play time) and snack time. For some reason I just could not get it to work. We barely had enough play time before outside time and the after time seemed to drag on. I thought of a hundred different ways to arrange it, but it just didn't give us anymore play time and that's what we needed.
I am such a big supporter of play, REAL PLAY. Not just learning centers where teachers create games with right and wrong answers, or something we get to do as a reward when we get our "work" done. REAL ****ing PLAY! I'm in a bunch of Facebook groups for preschool, Pre-K and even Kindergarten for US based and international programs. I feel like we are making headway in the idea of play-based education, but I'm often disheartened at the beginning of the year when preschool teachers are venting about students not being able to sit, listen, complete worksheets, etc.
The students were showing me (like all these other teachers) that they needed more play time. Sustained play time, play time that lets them get through all the bickering and settling in that happens for at least the first 20 minutes of play. We just weren't getting to that sweet spot where the magic happens and their eyes light up with creativity and imagination and LEARNING!
Rearranging the schedule, finally!
gIt's hard to know what are just adjustment periods and what are real issues when you only see your students a few days a week. By October it was obvious that changes needed to be made, and this was not just an adjustment period. So, I made the change. I switched outside time with our childcare outside time. This meant we would have our outside time at 8:30am. This gave us just enough time to have our to do our sign-in and play tubs routine, have a quick morning meeting to discuss our day and then go outside. When we come back we eat snack, read a book, and then get a whole hour to play. Sometimes we might even get a little extra when the weather is nice. Also, we are getting close to snow in Iowa. Even though it was 70 degrees in November, we know it is coming.
I'm hoping that parents will value outside time as much as me and will be willing get those kiddos dressed in all their gear before school to increase the days we can play outside. I'll do a whole blog on outside time later, but just know that this 30 minutes is non-negotiable for me.
It's been a few weeks on our new schedule and it's already so much better. I am so thankful for my teaching assistant that feels comfortable to question me when things just don't feel quite right. Her push led to our new schedule and let me know it wasn't just me that felt like things could be better. We chatted again this week and agreed our day feels better and when everyone is more comfortable and students are getting their needs met everything just feels easier. It's like a deep breath, a sigh of relief, like comfy sweatpants at the end of the day :)
Here is our old schedule for the 2-day Class
Here is our new schedule for the 2-day Class
Old 3-day Class schedule
New 3-day Class schedule
I hope this helps you. I hope when you are making your class schedule you prioritize play. I hope that when you think you've got it all figured out, but in reality it just feels wrong, that you make changes. I hope that you see all the challenges in the classroom and think what needs aren't being met, and how can I fix it.
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