Rollin' With My Homies: Music on a Cart

I came into this school year with more questions than answers. I'll be leaving it with a new appreciation for my colleagues and students.

Most teachers have a game plan for starting the school year on the right foot. I know I do! But the 2020-2021 school year completely stumped me. Every schedule was changing. Students would be having music in their homerooms. And the highly social and interactive nature of my usual lessons was being thrown in the bin.

My K/1 cart is ready to roll!

While I was anxious about staying healthy when I went back to school, I really adopted a laid-back attitude about my lessons. The kids were going to need structure, love, and some normalcy. Content was going to take a backseat for a while. Tackling all of that would take effort, but it would not be an impossible challenge.

Reality Bites

But then reality struck. I realized how many classrooms I would be rolling my cart into. And how many projectors I would have to meet. And how many seating arrangements there are (answer: the number of stars in the sky).

Because I am roughly the age of a dinosaur and have been teaching through at least three ice ages, I have no worries about people watching me teach. Come one, come all...you’re probably going to hear a booty joke or two.

While I have no qualms about being observed, many teachers do. I wanted our grade-level teachers to know I was there to support their students. I even made one of my yearly evaluation goals to help our teachers feel comfortable with me bringing all of my racket up into their spaces.

Aha Moments!

Next time you step into another teacher’s classroom, take the time to look around and see what works!

What I found when I went into core subject classrooms was a revelation. Every teacher was so different! I was impressed daily by how they identified their students’ needs and changed to meet them. Because I usually only see my students once weekly in my classroom, being in spaces that house the same students day to day has been enlightening.

Here is what I have learned in my year on wheels.

It’s a Space for Students

I’ve always been mindful of organizing my materials in a way that makes them accessible to students. What I loved about the general ed classrooms is that they make information available too. Not just static bulletin boards, but charts and lists that are accessed daily and changed when new knowledge is uncovered. In one dual-language classroom I saw a word-wall chart stack that students flipped through and added words as they learned. Brilliant!

It’s a Work in Progress

When something isn’t working, teachers change it. Changes can happen quickly, over the course of a lesson, or even a school year. Because I see kids once weekly, change comes at a snail’s pace. Some teachers change their approach regularly.

Seeing teachers experiment with new seating arrangements has been super cool! Watching a class with challenging behavior moved to rows and then back to small groups once they remember how they’re supposed to act in society really impressed on me that it is ok to take short-term action that will improve things in the long run.

Be Yourself

The classrooms I love being in are the ones where the teachers and students have put their personality into the space. Not every classroom is cutesy. Not every classroom is color-coordinated. But they represent the people who spend most of their time there. Some classrooms are cluttered, some are as neat, but the best ones put the kids at the heart of the environment and give them the support they need.

Next time you step into another teacher’s classroom, take the time to look around and see what works!