After a working as a Principal in the Vancouver district, Cheryl has recently returned to teaching and she is working as a Resource Teacher in an inner city school in Vancouver. Her breadth of knowledge and experience is huge! I couldn't spend enough time with her; I am always left with a feeling of wanting to learn more each time we are together. She has such a way of encouraging those around her to become better, more fulfilled, and more generous people. It is a very special gift she has, and I just cannot get enough of her spirit!
The goal of my day with Cheryl was to walk away with some new ideas and inspiration for my program at Georges Vanier. I love my LST position and I definitely feel inspired and challenged by the fantastic teachers that I work with teaching Grades 6 and 7. I am so lucky to work with a team of reflective practitioners but I would like to offer something new and useful to complement their programs-- and especially to help my LST students grow and learn even more.Cheryl definitely left me with new and interesting ideas. In fact, I found that I was kept awake at night thinking or dreaming of my new ideas all night for the rest of the week! I would get up in the morning feeling so inadequate--but ready to kickstart my program and help my students in new ways. Unexpectedly, it felt fantastic!
We kicked off last Wednesday with a morning meeting with the ELL District Helping Teacher, Janice Lam. Together we brainstormed some ways of helping some of our new ELL students with both language and learning issues. Currently there is not a lot of help for our beginner ELL students other than waiting 5 years and then assessing for potential (and previously assumed) learning disabilities. Janice mentioned that their district spent some of their Learning Improvement Funds to hire a district Psychologist with ELL testing capabilities. Interesting!
Then our day whipped by with a whirlwind of activity and wonderful students. I saw how Cheryl juggled guided reading groups, feeding snacks and lunches to hungry kids, students self monitoring their reading practice, prepared interactive computer presentations with classroom teachers, listened to kids who needed a friendship group to hang out with at lunch, prepared an after school challenge activity for a mother to administer to a small group of kids, helped a enthusiastic student demonstrate his new experiment kit from home to a group of students, teach me all about her greatest computer programs and go-to resources, and the list goes on and on and on....
I realize that there are many things that she is doing that I can easily incorporate into my program too. I am going to dust off a few of my trusty and underused resources (guided reading booklets!), roll up my sleeves and try a few new things I learned about (Reading A to Z, Raz_Kids), and get involved in a more student activities (friendship group? homework club?).
This experience was definitely left me feeling like I needed to open up to some exciting, but not necessarily new ideas. Just doing something with a refreshed enthusiasm and vigour, makes all the difference in the world. Thanks Cheryl!
