DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

I greeted our students every morning with a Morning Message. Students entered the classroom and instead of taking direction from teachers, practiced self-direction by reading the message and interacting with it in some way. Often I asked students to think back in their homework, to look around the classroom for something new or to reflect on our work from the day before.

       This simple ritual of Morning Meeting was meant to affirm student autonomy.  A consistent routine created a safe and secure learning environment for students – the message and agenda communicated a shared sense of direction. Students knew where we were taking them each day rather than being led blindly and asked to trust. My third grade students at ICS had been participating in the Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting since kindergarten so I did not face the challenge of teaching it to them. In fact, they often taught me new games and greetings!

            From my very first week at ICS students got to know me as the person leading morning meeting. They learned my teaching style in a safe and predictable routine and I learned about them through their daily shares and eventually, their work on my Book Bag Project. I was able to incorporate technology as well as social studies into our morning messages, which ended up being a major discussion point for our group! One day, Mavis saw me preparing the morning meeting message during quiet time at the end of the day. She asked why I always wrote “Good Morning” or “Hello” and said she’d wanted to practice different languages. I had been resistant to using languages I didn’t have a native speaker to question for pronunciation. And throughout Summer Prep the tradition of integrating other languages into the morning message without context didn’t quite sit right with me. Mavis request gave me the idea to begin writing the greeting in different scripts so, with the lack of perfect pronunciation students would at the very least be exposed to the fact that there are multiple alphabets in the world. I began to use greetings in Korean, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese. Students made guesses every day about what the new text was and were able to guess and explore the new alphabets. For pronunciation I turned to Google translator, which provides recordings of the various words so students could actually hear the correct pronunciation. In this way I also incorporated technology. Although I still haven’t figured out the best way to expose students to new cultures through the minute window of the morning message, while maintaining a foot planted firmly in culturally responsive pedagogy, this was a start in the right direction!

     I brought this tradition to WIlliam D'Abate where I generated many different greetings for my classes, honoring their hardwork. At William D'Abate with my fifth graders I let this nomenclature spill out into the rest of the day to remind them of the importance of our shared work together. My 206 students became Scientists, Writers, Researchers, Mathematicians, Travelers and Readers. My Morning Meeting pilot if fifht grade was such a success my mentor teacher, Crystal, is going to keep it in place after I leave! She remarked that she saw a change in behavior right away.

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.