Teaching Assets and Liabilities by Judy Lyden

Tuesday's Child

There is ALWAYS a better mousetrap. As a builder, I realize that not only are there many many mousetraps, there are many ways of using a mousetrap. I'm a re-upper, a re-organizer, a change is good person, and I'm always reviewing and fixing and making changes in everything I do. So the Garden School is always under siege by Miss Judy.

Most recently at school, we have had a change in staff, and that change in staff made the wheels of change begin to move in my mind. I thought a lot about what makes the GS different from other places, and what our good qualities are and what our liabilities are. As a builder, one wants as few liabilities as possible because one wants the building to be strong - a fortress - and in our case, a fortress against ignorance and particularly the ever encroaching shallowness that's a sign of our times.

As I mused about what gives us real life - it's commitment - to the school as a whole. If the school is important then the children, staff and parents will be committed to giving the life of the school the best we have - on the job and off. We are always teachers, no matter if we are here or there or anywhere, and the life of the teacher is non-stop. Teaching follows through at home, in public, and with friends. The committed teacher is an asset. He or she is always learning and always bringing new things to the classroom. The committed teacher is always bringing something new into the building, is eager to do new things, is eager to try new lessons, is someone who talks about teaching and is interested in more than the minimum that is expected. An asset is not looking for the bottom line, but the top line.

On the other hand, liabilities always hurt everyone because slack presents its rotten little head as time and a half in reverse! So the better mousetrap has no liabilities.

As an owner, I have to do my part to make sure that liabilities are never an issue. It's my job to offer a quality teaching environment to all our staff. Offering staff a quality schedule helps keep teachers enthusiastic because they don't go home exhausted every single day. They have time to engage the world and have a life outside of the school. Having a schedule that matters, teaching freedom, choice of classes, choice of extras, and the assurance that if someone needs time off, it's available because we all pull together, is the only way to manage a school like ours.

Working together to build this better mousetrap is easy when all the teachers are committed and not just to themselves, but to one another - it's the work at hand. It is my promise that all our teachers will be committed to the work at hand.

Finding originality among teaching strategies that actually work is another whole area for "the boss" that comes into play with a committed staff. The usual contained classroom has always been a model for me. I like it on a grand scale, but recently, I am thinking that although I think very young children need their own place to learn, they also need a variety of teaching styles to learn from. Not every teacher is good at all things. Not every teacher likes all things. So the "boss" needs to feed the children from the best pitchers she has.

One of the things I've noticed over the years is a shortcoming in continuity. I remember one year I taught my children to do perfect handwriting because handwriting is very important to me. As they moved into the next class, the teacher was not concerned at all with handwriting and as a result, the children never practiced and ultimately forgot how to write well, and that's a shame. Another experience is a loss in continuity with number patterns. I worked ever so hard to teacher patterns of numbers to my preschool class, and then it was totally forgotten in the next year when the teacher was not interested in what I had done. I believe number patterns are the key to understanding our based ten number system. If you can understand what makes ten, you can understand what makes 100, 1000, and finally non-real numbers.

So this next year, we will do a splendid little curriculum based on the idea of perfect parts of a whole. We will have a teacher for every subject who will float from one group to another. Miss Elise will teach art to the preschool, the 4-K and the K-1. Miss Julie will teach reading to all the groups, Mrs. St. Louis will teach arithmetic to all the classes, and Miss Amy will teach vocabulary and handwriting to all the groups. We will rotate from class to class. This actually strengthens the curriculum and allows the teachers to team teach. It makes continuity a non-issue because the continuity lies with one teacher. It puts everyone on the same track and makes us all responsible for the whole school curriculum and lessens the chance to drop the ball. In the afternoon we will teach the afternoon subjects on a rotating schedule as well.

And what will I do? Well, someone has to answer the phone... ;-)

I am committed to re-building the Garden School with a new teaching interest. I am looking forward to maximizing our ideal: Take a child from where ever he is as far as he can go...