-: My name is Abby New and I'm currently
a kindergarten teacher at an elementary school
here in Orlando.
Kindergarten is a very unique grade level.
It's always a balance between what's
developmentally appropriate and also you want to
make sure to hit the rigor of each of the standards,
and so it's a balancing act,
and I feel like as a teacher,
especially a teacher leader at my school.
It's to help really understand the standards
and make sure that the parents understand them
and that my fellow teachers
and that the students are getting
the most every day when they come into the classroom.
And so that's kind of the biggest challenge
of teaching kindergarten in addition
to the classroom management and all of those things,
but it's really to provide engaging lessons
that the children are having fun,
but that you also know that you're preparing them
for first grade at this point in the year,
and life skills, social skills, using their words
and that type of thing are equally as important
as the academic lessons that we do.
In my classroom we really focus a lot
on being helpful and kind and a lot of it's
teaching self regulation strategies,
so teaching the children when they get upset
to take a deep breath and use their words
and giving them the words that they should use.
I currently teach in a pretty affluent area,
but for the last 13 years I taught
in a very high poverty school,
and the biggest challenge there,
the biggest difference between the two
was just that self regulation,
but it's still equally important no matter where you teach
to teach the children how when they get upset
what the appropriate thing to do is.
For me, I start every morning
by greeting all of my students.
I have a greeting board and they can choose
how they want to be greeted,
whether it's a hug or a high five or a wave,
I greet all of my children by name,
and then they say hello Mrs. New back.
After that they do a little bit of reading,
and then we move right into a morning meeting,
which is a really important part of my classroom,
and it helps build that classroom community.
It starts every morning again now they greet each other.
That's always an important part of our morning meeting,
whether they roll the ball and say hello
or they say hello in a different language.
Then we do an activity, something fun
to get their sillies out, make them laugh,
and then I write them a morning message every morning.
So we read through that and it just
provides that whole language experience.
Sometimes this time of year I put a math question on there.
So I kind of embed a lot of different subjects
in that morning meeting time which is really important.
And then we close the day out by doing a closing meeting.
So we reflect on any acts of kindness
that we saw other children doing,
we celebrate always something,
whether it's a kid push in a chair
or someone played with a new child at recess,
you know, just take time to celebrate
and notice the children.
And then they say goodbye to each other.