This week has been incredible and I am incredibly pleased to share with you our accomplishments.
Many of you know that our class struggled a lot with first grade behavior. Beginning late last week, I began giving the scholars more responsibilities for their education. I then carried this into having the privilege to be in class. To be honest, I did not plan this out but rather this is also how I live my life. I understand that it is privilege for me to be their teacher and I understand that it is a privilege to be a part of Albert Einstein Academy. Further, I acknowledge that it was a privilege for me to receive higher education even after graduating with my BA degree in Liberal Studies Preparation in Teaching along with Creative Writing and Mathematics. Knowing this, I put in a lot of time and care into thinking about my lessons/scholars.
Therefore, all the consequences that the scholars received coincided with their behavior. For example, my scholars were told that the volume of each activity begins at zero (which means voices off). I do this for several reasons, but the main reasons is so that they can understand that being able to talk academically is a privilege - and essentially, they won't take advantage of that time to use unkind words or to speak about a topic that can distract from completing their work. From there, I chose scholars who demonstrated first grade behavior and who were completing their work in a timely manner; those scholars would then be given the privilege to use their whisper voices. By the end of the week, even after the entire class earned their whisper voices - many did not use it. I can safely say that a larger majority of our class completed their work this week and were more focused.
Furthermore, today I saw our scholars show incredible amounts of patience and empathy for their classmates. We had a few scholars who were very sad, and so we sat down as a class, and we talked about it. I believe that these are conversations that our children need to experience together to build their empathy for others and to continue building our community as a class.
Finally - please provide positive praise or affirmation to your scholar for their hard work in school this week, because they definitely demonstrated that in class. Homework is still due on Monday, as many of them are aware and have been completing it throughout the week - I am very proud of them :)