Monday, March 21, 2011

*New Feature*

Hi Everyone!
Heidi here! Just a reminder that there is no formal #kinderchat tonight! I think we've all earned a week off for *Spring Break* 2011 to recharge. I know Amy will be cocktailing around the hashtag tonight introducing her colleague to the wild world of twitter we all love.

While having formal topic rotations to hang our hats on provides an important focus, so too is "playtime" and unstructured time. That said, we are introducing our newest feature

POT O' GOLD

If you haven't yet noticed, topics are colour coordinated by the rainbow
Red: Reflection and Assessment
Orange: Work
Yellow: Classroom Life
Green: PLAY
Blue: Special Topic TBD
Indigo: Professional Life
Violet: Technology

and now....drum roll please!

POT O' GOLD
basically a no-topic, cocktail, informal time to chat! We'd like to extend an invite to companies and products to participate- great time to run a special! So join us for our prequel tonight!

The first POT O' GOLD is scheduled for April 18!

See! You can find the end of the rainbow! Right here on #kinderchat!






Here we are #kinderchatters! :D Our own little mascots! *Toot! Toot!*

These guys hatched out from one of the first few #kinderchats

The stream went something like this:
@hechternacht doing rhyming today. Tip for new teachers: never rhyme w duck

@Mr_Fines today we talked about dinosaur poop.

@happycampergirl phoque! Rhymes w duck. It means seal in French- we have to send a note home.

Soon after that the ducks were tooting, the seals were clapping and we were ALL rhyming with duck. (((clap))) (((clap)))

Big Thanks to Tony Squindo for bringing this concept to life for #kinderchat


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Personal Sensitivities and the Constant Critique

Well, hello out there! Heidi here! My goal was to have a blog post after every #kinderchat meeting of the minds yet it has been about a month since I last spoke in more than 140 characters!

The last few discussions have brought two important points up among our little community and it's time to talk about them. Granted, they were not brought up by regular weekly participants.

I believe this can be summed up in two parts:
1. The Constant Critic
2. Personal Sensitivities

As teachers, we all deal with both of these issues on a daily, ongoing basis. And believe me, it gets exhausting. Working with children on a daily basis on top of adult requirements for what they deem as proper practice certainly wears one down in both temperment and tolerance.

Our first case is the Case of the Constant Critic. This is someone I have faced may times. (Not this exact person, mind you, rather the type.) This person is generally appointed an expert through academia, attitude or job description. They are interested in influencing teachers through training. They have very clear ideas as to what should and should not be going in the classroom. They eagerly await a slip of a sentence to provide that crucial "teachable moment" to colleagues currently practicing the craft of teaching. They never seem to understand why teachers or colleagues are "resistant".

They will read that paragraph and incorrectly interpret that I do not value reflection of my professional practice.

I am reminded of the time I was evaluated by someone on my performance of a scripted curriculum. Her evaluation mentioned that my "mini-lesson" ran 12 minutes when it should only be 10 minutes.

I'm only going to say this:
If you are constantly looking for faults, you will surely find them.

Indeed, The United States is setting itself up for just that in our current climate of teaching. Personally, I cannot express how much the Canadian teachers and experts in kinderchat have influenced my thinking, practice and respect for their approach of education and the profession of teaching. I look to them as leaders in the field of teaching young children and want to specifically mention the wonderful sharing of teaching practice coming from Canada.

Kinderchat is not here to evaluate your growth or learning in teaching. We firmly believe that by sharing we will help each other grow and learn. We are a relaxed and happy group, full of jokes, stories and reflections. We grant each other professional expertise.


Interesting to note, that this particular critiquer was either unable or unwilling to share his own resources and contributed nothing to the roundtable other than his opinions of the quality of our sharing resources and practice on the topic. Yes, critiques go two ways.

Who you are and how you conduct yourself within our community matters.

Secondly, the personal sensitivities and bias issue. I opened the chat last night with a request to keep Japan in your prayers or pray for Japan, something to that effect. btw I am not religious, but I felt that the extreme situation of a country facing nuclear meltdown warranted a call for prayers. I was quickly accused of being insensitive to atheists.

I will only say this:
If you spend your time waiting to be offended and excluded, you surely will be.


It is our goal to be a place of refuge and support for Kindergarten and Professionals working in the field of Early Childhood Education. If you spend your time tearing down systems of support, you are not helping our community and are interrupting productive conversations. This doesn't mean that we don't appreciate "tough questions" or a good old fashioned debate, but rather we are actively involved in our practice every day, we are human and we are all working very hard both offline and on to create wonderful learning environments for children all over the world.

Please think deeply about all of this before you participate as it is core to the beliefs of kinderchat.

Thank you,
Heidi

Monday, March 14, 2011

Archive to Classroom Life Topic: Field Trips, March 7

Just so you all know, I am hanging my head in shame that it has taken me an entire WEEK to post this...  All I can say in my own defense is that it is report card time up in here, and I know you all know what a time-suck THAT is.

So, here it is.  As you may remember, we had some moments that were borderline confrontational. Alas, the instigator of those moments deleted all of his #kinderchat tweets before I created the archive. Lesson learned: from this point forward, archives will be created promptly, 30 minutes after the chat ends. I also promise to make an effort to POST said archives in a far more timely fashion.

Coming up in less than an hour: PLAY: The Great Outdoors.

xo
Amy

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Archive to Curriculum Areas Topic: Gross Motor Development, Feb 28

Sorry for the delay on this one folks. WhatTheHashTag, our usual archive service, appears to be out of order indefinitely, so I tried something new. As it turns out, tweetdocs.com makes even more beautifuller (hmmm, perhaps I have been reading a little too much Junie B Jones...) archives! I love love love the rainbow at the top, and that everyone's twitter avatars appear in the document.

Go ahead, admire how beautiful you all are! Click here for the archive!

Oh, and on behalf of my stir-crazy, cabin-fever-riddled children, THANK YOU to everyone who contributed such amazing, creative, and FUN ideas for incorporating more gross motor activity into my classroom routines. Thanks to all of you, my students will not only survive this interminable cold snap, they might just thrive...

xo
Amy