Next year, I will be a 0.7 Teacher-Librarian and a 0.3 classroom teacher. I am going to hold back on saying which grade I am teaching right now until the fall, when school returns. This past year my 0.3 consisted of some small group reading instruction with Grade 1 students and teaching Drama, Dance & Music in grades 1, 2 and in a 3/4 class. I enjoyed it a lot, but these art subjects are not my specialty. I told my principal if I was 0.7 Teacher-Librarian then she could literally put my 0.3 in anywhere in her jigsaw puzzle of staffing – any grade(s), any subject(s).

I have been in touch with my new grade partner – the teacher that I am sharing this class with. It turns out she is a former Kindergarten student of mine! Oh dear… I am getting old. Sigh. This is year 22 for me. I started teaching in September of 2000 in Thornhill, just north of Toronto. I taught her and one of her siblings in London back in 2002-2006. I have been hearing wonderful things about this teacher from my colleagues. We are going to meet later this summer to do some planning together. But before the summer break, we did breakdown who is teaching what.

I will be teaching “STEAM” – Science & Technology, Visual Arts and Mathematics. And I am so excited for a number of reasons.

These three subjects are some of my favourite to teach. Also, the curriculum for this particular grade connects to my hobbies: beekeeping, e-biking, making stained glass pieces and eco-things. Both the Math & Science curriculum have been updated recently and both have coding expectations that I can integrate. I am going to use the year long framework provided by the Ministry of Education (the questions based one) as a skeleton that I can tie-in the Science and Art to. Why do we have to do units in chunks? How can I weave in different strands and connect them instead of teaching them as separate units? I have started slides for the first 2 months – up to the progress reports. I will share them widely (and for free) once I have them polished up. Watch for that post in early September!

Another reason is that our class is the only straight grade – the rest that teach the same grade (4 classes) are splits higher and lower. In my Teacher-Librarian role, I see myself sharing some of the “fun” things that we are doing with half of their classes in the same grade. This way, teachers of these splits can focus on their other class grade for a bit. Work smarter – not harder! I see what I am going with this class in STEAM spreading to other grades as well.

Furthermore, I do not have a particular resource at our school that I am using to teach math. I am pulling lessons from TVO Learn (and translating them to French), Science North (available in French and English) and different professional books that I grabbed in the LLC (see above). I think resources for Science are coming to TVO Learn soon. I have IDÉLLO videos and resources to explore too. am going to use the Outdoor Guides developed by TVDSB to teach a lot of the material outdoors. We also have wonderful Visual Arts slides and ideas developed by TVDSB staff that I can integrate. For instance, one unit on texture and that includes Eric Carle books and artwork caught my eye. It also includes finding textures outdoors in nature. I am finding great lessons using Ozobots for the first 6 weeks in Math and Science. What can we do with Lego? Where can I tie-in a little Minecraft exploration? And although I do not have the Literacy portion – I will not be able to help but use some great Science and Math books to read aloud and promote growth mindset in these subject areas.

Lastly, I am excited about the spaces that I can use. The classroom itself will be available. There are a lot of useful Math Tools there at my disposal. I teach these students for the last block of the day. Perhaps moving to the Maker-space attached to the Library Learning Commons for that block can become routine? I could use a cart and take what we need down the hall to the LLC. This year, I trained a number of teachers on how to run their own book exchanges in the LLC. This last block of the day when I am otherwise occupied will be a great period for them to do this. Which frees up the rest of my schedule for partnering with teachers. I see outdoor classroom spaces being used on-site, but also walkable field trips to the Sifton Bog nearby or Kelly Park. Perhaps the other teacher and I can both take them outdoors and off-site for some learning. Boom – we have our ratio or supervisors to students!

While I am planning all this, I know that it could all change. If anything, the last few years have prepared us for this and how to pivot quickly. This wonderful new teacher partner of mine could get bumped up to 1.0. If our school grows, my TL piece could get bumped up too. We could get reorganized as a division in the fall. So, for now, I am just focused on the first 6 weeks. I taught this group of students last year, so I will already have some relationships established. But I will do some things to connect us as a classroom community.

So this summer, I am dreaming of teaching kids how to think and gain skills as Scientists, Mathematicians and Artists!

Featured Image by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash