Notes
Katie is a First Grade teacher at Manchester Park. She has been there since the building opened, teaching first grade, 21 years ago!
I shared that our purpose today was to learn about one another, both personally and professionally, and to discuss her successes and challenges in literacy instruction.
She has a husband and two kids who keep her busy:Â Jack (14 – a Freshman at ONW) who is trying out for the golf team and Peyton (6th grade) who plays basketball and softball.
When I said, “There must have been quite a few changes over the course of 21 years,” she said that she has had three principals, a new team almost every year, things come and go and come back again (PBIS and Guided Reading ->DRI).
She described her path to teaching in this way – “I always played school. I created my own overhead projector with a fish tank and a lamp and was disappointed to find that, when I became a teacher, there were no more overhead projectors! I always took discarded books from the teachers. I worked in day care and ran softball camps. Then I student taught in first grade and knew that was where I wanted to be.”
I asked about what she wrote that she was hoping to gain from the class, and she told me about a group of four girls who struggled in the beginning and didn’t even know all of their letter sounds. Two of them have “taken off” and are making good progress, but the other two are still struggling with segmenting and blending CVC words. She told me that they had passed all aspects of the PASI (which measures phonological and phonemic awareness). They will be switching intervention groups soon, so she will request to have these two girls for instruction.
She will be prepared to talk next time about a goal.
When thinking about the content of Course I, she identified Phonological and Phonemic awareness and Phonics as the areas she knew the most about and was the most confident in teaching. She identified Assessments and Fluency as areas in which she hoped to learn more to benefit her students.
We talked about our meetings, what coaching is and what it isn’t, and set out next meeting time for February 10 at 1:00.
In the meantime, I will be sending an email outlining some things she can expect from me and our work together.