It's not just Skype!

This past week was very exciting for my assistant teacher Mrs. Fran as she became a grandmother to a beautiful little girl Mollie. Her daughter was blessed by having her stay for a week to help with the care taking. However, the students and myself missed Fran while she was not in school. We decided to use skype and connect during the week!

We were able to skype with the class and project onto the large smartboard and hear a story from Mrs. Fran. The children couldn't quite understand how Mrs. Fran was on the t.v. (as they call the SMART board) and how she could see them. I showed the children the camera and tried to explain to them that our computer was calling Mrs. Fran's computer. Either way, the details didn't matter to them, what mattered was the relationship that was fostered.

In this article: The importance of  Teacher-Child Relationships in Head-Start,

it states that "close teacher-child relationships were related to better receptive language for all children, but this was even stronger for children of color than for white children. Further, the connection between positive teacher-child relationships and children’s language was even stronger for preschool children than early elementary school children."  This one result was worth every second we spent on Skype with Mrs. Fran! 

Some see Skype as a fun way to connect with family or friends, but I see it as an educational learning tool that fosters relationships and builds connections that go beyond the school walls. I can't wait for another opportunity to use it!

Difficult Reality

These are my personal thoughts on what is going on in my classroom, a reflection, a blog post if you will.

The difficult reality I speak of today is hungry children. It is difficult because children whose basic needs are not meet can not move on to anything else until those basic needs are met.  I'm talking about learning here. If a child is hungry or tired, they are not going to be learning anything to their fullest potential. My job is then considered difficult because I want children to learn and be successful reaching their fullest potential but it isn't happening because they are hungry.

The last week in January I had at least half of my students tell me they were hungry. I would ask them if they had breakfast or something to eat before coming to school. Guess the response. No. I pondered this for a while. It would not have caught my attention but this trend was occurring in both morning and afternoon classes and with multiple children. This causes a teacher to wonder what is going on here. Why are the children so hungry?

My thoughts: were they in a hurry this morning, did they not want to eat, did they over sleep? What is it? I had to think about this because these basic needs were interfering with our learning. My second thought was, it is the end of the month. We all know our finances can get tight during this time of the month. I can't say for sure what is going on or why the students have been coming to school so hungry, but it does make me stop and think.

We are so thankful to be able to provide a healthy snack for children while they are at school. As I look at my classes and reflect on learning, I know my students need their basic needs met first! Are you able to meet your students needs?