Tuesday, March 19, 2013

C-D-A-E-S...We are the best!

This year I have had the amazing opportunity to work at Community Day Arlington Elementary School (CDAES).  Having worked as a classroom assistant, social studies teacher, and after-school program coordinator at an elementary school through AmeriCorps my first two years out of college, I wanted to continue my work in education before I committed to law school.  So far, it's been a wonderful experience and I feel so privileged to be part of CDAES' first year staff.
 
CDAES is a special kind of hybrid.  Although the school is part of the Lawrence public system and is considered a regular public school (serving students from the neighborhood), our classrooms operate in a very charter-school-like manner.  Currently, the school serves K-1st, but will be serving up to 4th grade next year.  We have 8 classes total and the majority of our students are English Language Learners.
 
As a generalist, I get to do a little bit of everything.  I help administer tests (specifically any kind of ELL/ESL tests), assist teachers when their co-teacher is out or, if both teachers are out, serve as a substitute.  When I am not doing either of these things, I am working in specific classrooms that have specific needs.  Classroom instruction at our school is data driven and similarly, so is my schedule.  After a cycle of testing (MAP or STEP), we look at what classrooms might benefit from extra assistance.  K-1st grades spend a lot of time building and strengthening literacy skills, so naturally a lot of the assistance I provide is in that area.  I typically take a small group of students (2-6) and work with them on skills they are having trouble mastering or skills they need to practice.  This can include basics like working on letter sounds, to building words, to rhyming, to guided reading.

Most of my previous classroom experience was with 2nd-5th graders, so working with K-1st grades has been a new adventure!  Academically, the school year moves a lot more slowly, as much of our time is spent on reinforcing basic skills, but behaviorally and socially, you see so much more progress than with older grades.  Most of our kindergarteners came to us never having attended preschool and even some of our first graders had limited schooling in the US, so naturally there was a period of adjusting to the classroom structure.  It really is amazing to see how much each student has grown and I look forward to challenging our little ones and seeing them continue to learn, grow, and succeed.

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