Adrienne's ?P&P

Adrienne Sodemann

N. Votteler

SHSU Writing Project

7 June 2011

The Teacher Exploration Workshop (The Question and Profile & Philosophy):

Finding Common Ground in the Writing Celebration for a Kindergarten Team

The Question:

How can I find common ground among team members with vastly differing philosophies to

celebrate kindergarten writing at the end of the year?

Philosophy & Profile:

This matters to me because for the past two years, I have built a framework for celebrating kindergarten writing, together with a teammate, that has been a poignant experience for all who were involved. We called it, Masterpiece Theater. In this celebration, each child chooses one piece of writing to stretch, edit, type, print, illustrate and publish. Then in May, we invite the parents to come to our classroom and the students read their stories aloud, into a microphone, for all the families. This showcases not only their writing skills, but reading skills as well. Each child has their own copy of their "book" to take home and we compile a second copy into a bound version that becomes an actual library book. This past spring, an impromptu meeting was called, wherein the principal, assistant principal and the kindergarten team were called together to find out why half of the team was doing one celebration and one another. We were told we could not do Masterpiece Theater this year. At this point in time, all of our preparations were made, parents were expecting it and so were the children. The principals allowed us to continue for this year, but told us we had to all be on the same page in 2010. The other half of our team argues that what we were doing was developmentally inappropriate and puts undue stress upon the students to perform. Their idea of a developmentally appropriate celebration consisted of inviting the parents into the room before school starts to eat donuts and browse through a spiral notebook that has the students writing for the whole year.

The concern is for the kindergarten team to show a cohesive front to the community, without giving up the powerful experience of the Masterpiece Theater. The parents and families at our school are very involved with their children's school experiences and have given a great deal of positive feedback to us about their own impressions of this celebration. The argument that the Masterpiece Theater writing celebration is developmentally inappropriate can be debated against and possibly won, but that alone will not necessarily be enough to allow us to continue this celebration. Half of the team consists of two teachers who have been teaching together for many years and do not embrace change easily, especially when the change is a shift in a philosophy of teaching. The other half is very open to change and both have very learner-centered classrooms. How can two such differing philosophies of teachers come together on an end of the year celebration of kindergarten writing?