This year started with a bump and a bounce as our new classroom wasn’t ready. We began the year in the PAC and this changed how I was feeling about moving into an MLE environment. As we transitioned from the PAC into a not quite complete classroom, I brainstormed some of my thinking onto paper. The first and foremost purpose of this was to try and order some of my thoughts but also prepare myself for some of the thinking and questions I might have for an upcoming visit at Katikati Primary to view their MLE environment.
At Katikati Primary we saw things that we found were things that we would totally take on board and use in our own classroom, but also things that we knew would not work for us. Their space was lovely and the way they worked together was great but there was systems that we knew wouldn’t work for us. We also got ideas about how we would set up our space and what it would look like.
Our new space did not have glass in the centre doors so working together kind of happened through need. I found it hard to teach my class and keep them focused if L was talking to her class too or they were moving about and doing activities. My class also found it hard to focus during this time. Out of necessity and as a natural course of action, we began working together for writing. Primarily L was leading this. We quickly realised that we needed to align our timetables to make it work.
Our first CRT day was spent working together to figure out a combined plan for reading. It took an entire day to figure out how we were going to work as one shared class for this time. I felt very challenged during this time as there were things that I had to compromise on that I feel strongly about and there were things that I agreed to that I wouldn’t have done in a single cell classroom. For example, I wanted to do a must do / may do type reading time but L wanted to do tumbles. We ended up doing a tumble.
After talking to a few people who were already in MLE spaces, they had said, you lose a little bit of yourself in this type of environment. On this day, I certainly felt that.
After drafting a plan and groups, I spent the weekend creating the template in Google Sheets and amending our plan to make it work online. This was a huge process for what would just be one part of our day, each day. However, I was proud of the end result.
On our first shared CRT day we also decided that with the workload of setting up the new classrooms and beginning of the year and ML visiting for MST groups and working with us, we would remain working independently for Maths once the glass arrived for the doors.
I found it challenging getting into our new reading programme with all of the activities happening around the school. Once we managed to get into a routine, I found the workload during reading time seemed less stressful and I began to enjoy the flow of the groups. Whilst we felt our way around this, much of what we were doing remained the same with small tweaks here and there. There had been a lot to chew over during the course of the term as it was.
On our final combined CRT day, we planned our writing. We decided that we were going to keep working together but that I wanted a little more input. I felt nervous asking about this as I know that it is L’s passion. I was a little hurt by her response but also know that she was probably feeling how I felt during the reading discussion we had had.
Once again, it took a long time to organise the writing. It felt as though we had attempted ‘the easy one’ first. It took us an entire day to discuss what writing might look like, how it might fit into our current timetable, how we ensured that our target students who were out for MST time got literacy time too, how we balanced who was leading writing with other responsibilities throughout the week, how we ensured that reading and writing were together on the timetable and fitted around all other commitments. At the end of that day we had planned groups, what it might look like in practise, how we would reorganise our timetable but not what the plan would look like. This day was certainly more challenging that the previous. Whilst I will work more on the plan in the holidays, I have a skeleton plan that I worked on over the weekend.
This is where I found we were at the beginning of the first term, with particular regard to the 'big stuff'.
Some of the challenges I am finding working in a shared space thus far are:
- · Building a relationship with someone in a slightly different context.
- . Working alongside someone constantly.
- · Trying to address my flaws and things I know I need to work on although I am not sure that these are the things that she would agree are my flaws and things I need to work on.
- · Different styles of communication.
- · Working alongside someone who is often out of the classroom and having a relief teacher.
- · Working with a release teacher who is bubbly and positive but doesn’t always have the most up to date practise and is not in the classroom all the time so does not know the expectations in full (and the changes as they are made) and does not have the same strong relationships with the children.
- · Lots of fiddly bits that aren’t quite finished or as expected. For example on going issues with glass in the door, rails on the deck and rubber around the door frame.
- · Working alongside someone with different priorities and strengths.
Things I am enjoying and successes from working within a shared space thus far:
- · Working alongside another adult (apparently I don’t talk as much when I get home at night anymore).
- · Getting to know twice as many children and building relationships with them.
- · Having a colleague who can support with behaviour management, celebrate successes etc when you want to share or are having a day that is not quite 100%.
- · Having someone to bounce ideas off.
- · Our lovely space and the furniture in it.
- · Having two people with different strengths in the same space.
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