Dear my past, present, and future monkey friends,
I would like to take some time to share the importance of
you as a student in my class, the importance of me as your teacher, and the
importance of our life here together.
In order for me to do this, I strongly believe that you need to
understand my life, my thinking, and my passion. I am a very visual learner so I want you to visually
understand how teaching is like gardening.
Let me first share why I selected to compare teaching to gardening. Ever since I was four, five, or six years old (your age when you were in my classroom) I loved helping both my mom and my grandparents in the garden. I would run outside in the morning to help my Grandma pick off the dead flowers so that more would grow. I would also assist in watering the flowers. The best part though was every night in the summer I would sneak my mom away. We would take our lawn chairs out to the front garden where we would sit and watch the evening primroses pop open. This is where I learned how to count, shared endless silly stories, and learned about life from my mom. Today I think back to that time and believe this saying. “Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.” (Gerard DeNerval). Now that I have grown up, gone through college, and have begun my teaching career, I still think back to those summers that I blossomed like a flower. The reality for me is that, my friends, you are all flowers in my garden. I have taken the time to tend to you, care for you, engage you in learning, and provide the essential learning objectives to watch you blossom as a kindergartner. This is why I strongly believe that teaching is a lot like gardening.
The most interesting idea to consider is that anyone can
teach, just like anyone can plant a garden. However, the people that put time into caring for and
researching new ideas will become successful at both gardening and teaching. I, as your teacher, had to and have to be ready for all of
you. All of my different, unique,
loving little learners, just like gardens have to be ready for all the
different flower seeds. After all,
not all flower seeds start off the same.
Some are small and some are long.
Some grow quickly, while others take more love and care to grow. Are you beginning to see just how
similar flowers and gardening are to teaching? You are my flowers and you have to remember that. You must
realize that “children and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.”
Jackson Brown. Jr. I am very aware
that for you to succeed there are essential ingredients involved. I will start
today with flower seeds. Flower
seeds need the perfect location of rich, nutritious soil, where their roots can
stretch out. They also need the extra
nutrients, food, water and sun to keep them growing into a strong and beautiful
flower. Watch as I take each of
these key ingredients of growing flowers and compare them with my own views on
teaching and life.
Lets begin with the seeds. My friends, the seeds are you when you were first born. Seeds are very fragile items that
gardeners have to handle carefully.
Just like your parents had to handle you very carefully when you were a
baby. Many of you had baby
brothers, sisters, and cousins when you were with me in class, during your
kindergarten year. Take a moment
and remember just how carefully you had or have to hold your little baby
brother, sister, or cousin. Think
of how your parents have to tend to them at all times to make sure they are
safe, secure, and happy.
Also, as I have mentioned, seeds come in different sizes,
shapes, and abilities. Remember
when we measured you on the first day of school. I had you stand next to the Suzy Zoo growth chart, by the
bathroom door, and we measured how tall you were. We saw that some of our friends were shorter while others
were tall. We continued to measure
you at the end of each marking period.
Wasn’t it fun to watch all of our friends grow?! We began to grow and grow and
grow. We grew in our height, our learning abilities, our communication, and our
teamwork.
Roots share with me all the experiences you have had. Some of your roots pop up or are
visible to me, where as others I have to dig deeper to learn about. The neat thing is that every one of
you, my friends, have roots. Just
like all flowers have roots, it is what keeps them sturdy in the ground and
provides them with the strength to keep growing. Or as a student your roots are your life experiences. You all came into kindergarten with
some life experiences. However,
none of your roots look the same.
None of you had the exact same life experiences. This is the fun, yet challenging part
of my job, as your teacher. The
first couple weeks of school I work to thoroughly understand all of your roots,
all of your past experiences. Although now as I reflect back with another close teacher, I
realize that throughout the entire year I am constantly working to better
understand your roots. Your roots
may share with me why on some days you are just not ready to learn, or why
certain things in the classroom might make you angry, or why some friends need
quiet working spots while other friends need to be encouraged to work in small
groups. You see my friends,
throughout your entire life; your roots and experiences will keep growing. It is important for me, as your
teacher, to understand your roots.
I want to understand what makes you excited about learning, I want to
know the areas where you feel successful, I want to know your fears so that I
can work to eliminate or minimize them, I want to share with you new ways to
show your families what you are learning, I want to give 100% of myself to
helping you succeed and blossom as a kindergartner! For many of you, kindergarten was where your first roots in
schooling took place. I strive to
provide you with a strong and positive experience to begin your schooling
career!
Soil is the home to where the flowers live. Flowers need the soil to provide the
structure, support, and care. Soil
itself is made up of different ingredients. Some soils are very sandy, while others have lots of
clay. Soil is just like your home. Your home consists of different
structures, support, and care.
Some of you live in cottages, or trailers, or two story homes. It does not matter where you live, it’s
that you have a structure over you head; you have shelter for support and
protection. Not all of our
families look the same. Some of us
live with mom and dad, while others of us live with our grandma. Fortunately you are all blessed to live
with someone that cares so much about you. I have learned that no matter what
type of house you live in or whom you live with, we all have a home. Our homes are so special to us and we
are proud of our homes. No matter
how busy our families are or what things our parents’ value, in the end all of
our families want to see us grow and want to support us just like the soil
supports the flower.
Parent support is something that I have communicated
consistently with a colleague. My
colleague shared with me that every parent wants to care for his or her
child. However, some may need
guidance on what caring looks like, some may need time, while others may have
varying levels of support. This is
hard for me to comprehend because as you know I strive to provide all of you
with support, comfort, and time every day at school. I bet you all can remember our class hug! This is just one way we show that we
are all here for each other and ready to help one another out. Remember our compliment chain? I love
adding links to our chain because of the kind words that you share with each
other. Remember the quiet morning
breakfasts? I am so glad that the
school allowed me to serve breakfast to some of you in my classroom, fifteen
minutes before school started.
This truly provided a time for many of you to get emotionally ready to
be a learner that day at school.
As you are beginning to see, I am and will always be here for YOU! Although, I am learning that some of
you are receiving the support that you need right at home. I am so thankful for that!
The topsoil or nutrients are the added boost to help enrich
the soil. These nutrients go into
the roots, which then help our flowers grow. For teaching, the topsoil and nutrients are the teachers. Teachers are the added resource that is
essential to assist the students in growing. I learned early on, through a reading titled Cultural Literacy and The Schools, that
“some children enter school already processing the information needed to make
further advance in literature culture, while others come to school lacking that
information” (111). It is my job
as your teacher to supply this missing knowledge or provide the nutrients that
will help enhance your motivation and intellectual self-confidence as a
learner. We as teachers have to
understand that the best teaching does accommodate itself to individual
differences and needs. Some of you
may need extra nutrients or extra support to grow, while others may need fewer
nutrients. This is similar to
gardens in that some soil is very rich and nutritious and may need only a
little bit of topsoil. While other
gardens may be in need of lots of topsoil because it is composed of mostly
sand.
All gardens need water to help the flowers grow. Water is an essential ingredient for
flowers. Water is the learning
objectives or goals in teaching. Everywhere
across the nation there is water to use to water the flowers. Just like everywhere across our nation
schools have goals that are set to help our students blossom and succeed. I believe that it is important that
schools everywhere “should share common goals but their means for achieving
goals should be varied and adaptive.” (Dr. Patricia Graham). For some of you I used the Grade Level
Content Expectations (GLCES) to help guide me in what objectives I had to teach
you. For others I have begun and
will continue to use the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to help direct me
in your learning goals. The GCLES
and CCSS are like the water that I need to provide you with. Every single flower needs the essential
water but some flowers need more water to help them grow. This extra water refers to the extra
time that teachers may need to spend teaching, re-teaching, or referring back
upon the different learning objectives.
As I reflect back on the idea of gardening I begin to
realize just how much trial and error occurs when it comes to watering
plants. In the past three years I
have been teaching kindergarten, I constantly reflect upon the lessons that I
have taught. Remember me walking
around with a clipboard? Some of
you nicknamed it my new best friend and would say, “Hey Miss Meyer, don’t
forget your best friend!” This
clipboard was where I would jot down how each of you were doing in grasping a
particular concept. I would make
notes to myself as to who may need some extra practice on the basic concept or
who may need a challenge the next time I present this topic. I also would make notes to myself as to
things that you all really enjoyed and maybe some parts of teaching that just
did not go as expected. I wanted
to make sure that I was presenting learning goals to you in a meaningful and
stimulating manner, in a way that you would be able to directly connect to the
content. I have learned that I
need to strive to provide for you a variety of learning experiences. These learning experiences should help
you develop skills in thinking, help you work to acquire new information and
learn what to do with that information, help you develop social attitudes based
off of emotional situations, and help you in developing interests that are
important to you. We as teachers strive to provide the
accurate amounts of water that will help you grow and blossom into a beautiful
flower!
As I am working to provide you will all the learning
essentials, I have become aware of some variables that I cannot control, that
will affect your growth. These
uncontrollable variables are the sun.
As a gardener we cannot say how much sun we will get each day. We may work to plant flowers in a specific
location in our garden so that they will get just the right amount of sun. However, the sun may still shine at
just the right angle to provide “additional” light on some plants. Some days the sun may never shine and
that will provide gardeners with extra struggles to keep their flowers
growing. In teaching today, I feel
like we are getting more and more used to the uncontrollable variables. Standardized tests are becoming more
and more a part of our teaching and learning time together. The stress placed on these tests is not
only affecting the way that we teach but are also affecting our students. Even in kindergarten I have to provide
standardized tests. Remember
taking DIBLES or NWEA or PASI or MMLA?
We worked hard as learners to focus in so that we could perform well on
these tests. Sadly, for education
today standardized tests are one variable that we still need to participate in,
in order to blossom as a student.
Finally I have made it to the flower. The flower represents all of you at the
end of the year in kindergarten.
You have blossomed into a smart learner that is ready to take on the
rest of your years in school. By
the end of the year you have learned the essentials of what it looks like,
feels like, and sounds like to be a student learner. I always love the time we share on the last day of
school going through our classroom slide show. This is a time where you are sitting their reliving ALL the
wonderful moments you have had in kindergarten. This is a time we get to reflect back together on the journey
each of you take in becoming a flower.
Do you remember being so shy and timid and afraid to leave your families
throughout that first week of school?
Isn’t it awesome how easy and exciting school is now! This just shows that “The flower has
opened, has been in the sun and is unafraid. I’m taking more chances, I’m bold, and proud.” Paula Cole. You my friends are ready to take on first grade!
As I think back to saying my goodbyes for the summer I still get emotional. You, my friends, have made a lasting impact on my life. I never realized that as a teacher I could become so close throughout a year as I do become with you. The best part is watching you walk out to the busses the last day of school and waving to each of you as you get on the bus. I sit and think back to that first day of school where I had to place each of you on your bus and in your seat. Oh my friends, how quickly you learned the routine of our 26 busses! You simply amazed me and continue to amaze me everyday. Colleagues often share that I have something special that some teachers just do not have. That something special is the time and love that I have for you all. As I end this letter to you, I want you to take this quote with you forever. “Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.” John Lennon. I have watched you grow and will continue to watch you grow throughout your schooling career. I love when you come back and say hello. I know all my little seeds have blossomed into beautiful flowers and now is the time for you to take on the world!
Love you all!
Miss Meyer
Miss Meyer
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