Spirit Play: teacher feedback survey
May. 23rd, 2009 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingWe currently have an interim Director of Religious Education (DRE) at my church, and he and our assistant DRE are trying to overhaul our children's RE program to make it more effective, more fun, and more attractive to volunteers. Last Sunday was the last day of classes (tomorrow is a multi-gen activity in the annex, next week is Flower Communion, and June 7th is the annual picnic in Stewart Park) so all teachers were sent a feedback survey about our experiences this year.
I feel like sharing my responses. *grin*
1. Describe your expectations when you signed up to teach this semester. Did teaching meet your expectations? Why or why not?
I expected to spend time with children, read stories, lead chalice lighting and joys & sorrows, manage arts & crafts and keep an eye on free play, serve snack, clean up, ask questions and try to keep classroom order, be rewarded by the company of children, probably have a few awkward moments while coordinating with other teachers, and have a lot of good moments coordinating with other teachers.
That is pretty much what happened. :-)
2. Give details about a time when you were teaching on Sunday and you were feeling really good about it.
Well, just last week we had no lesson plan -- the official curriculum said to maybe reread stories from previous lessons, or talk about questions we've considered over the year -- so I brought in a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories instead and read "How the Whale Got His Throat." It was very fun, since the story is written with the intent to read it aloud, and it can easily be made interactive by pausing now and then to ask questions like, "Why do you think the 'Stute Fish told the Whale to try eating a man?" or, "So what do you think the sailor did then?"
I really like it when I feel the class is all together paying attention to one thing -- I also like to interact with the kids one-on-one, but there's a danger of ignoring the quieter kids that way, so it's nice when everyone is on the same page.
3. Share about another time when you were teaching on Sunday and you were not feeling good about it.
Oh, several times I was extremely frustrated by the curriculum stories. You see, a lot of the lessons (especially early in the year) were just WAY too short, so we had a hard time stretching the lesson to a reasonable length. Also, the Spirit Play curriculum does not come with activities, so we had to make up our own arts & crafts ideas all the time. But it was the stories that bothered me most, because many of them fall horribly flat when read aloud, and/or they fail the basic five-year-old logic test -- i.e., five-year-olds can and will point out all the plot holes and will then ignore the moral lesson because they find the story dumb and boring.
Also, when we used stories from other cultures, there was often not enough cultural background information provided. I noticed this especially when we did the story about Ganesh, and the story of the two sisters from the Capilano area around Vancouver. This is bad and should be fixed.
4. Put into plain words how you feel you did as a teacher in our RE program? What are your strengths and weaknesses as an RE teacher?
I love teaching. It can be a little stressful sometimes, if the class is kind of dead or if the class is hyperactive, but I love it anyway.
I am very good at stories! :-) I am also fairly good at helping keep a class together when somebody else is the lead teacher -- things like calling someone's attention back to whoever is speaking, reminding kids not to interrupt, and so on. I am not so good at asking for help when I am the lead teacher, because I am something of a perfectionist and I want to do everything myself, even though I know that's silly. I am also not that great at arranging or coordinating schedules with fellow teachers.
5. Did you feel communicated with/supported enough to do your teaching well? What are your suggestions for further support and communication for next year?
I definitely felt communicated with. The only problem (and it was extremely minor, and at least half my own fault anyway) was when [the assistant DRE] went on vacation and I didn't realize that we didn't already have 'stages of life' illustration cards. So I didn't make any beforehand, and had to enlist the kids to help draw people at various ages. This actually worked out well, since it made the lesson more participatory and interactive, and I really should have asked about the lesson supplies earlier anyway.
6. Share some of your ideas for classroom procedures (how to organize and focus students)?
It is much easier to get a class started on a good note now that we're not 'babysitting' kids for fifteen or twenty minutes before the rest of the class comes up from the sanctuary. That was always tricky to deal with, since we had some kids doing free play, and then the new arrivals wanted to join in instead of gathering and calming down to start the lesson.
Anyway, I like that we always start with chalice lighting, an opening, and then usually a pass-the-squeeze. Then we do joys & sorrows; often you have to remind the kids not to interrupt each other, by saying things like, "Okay, So-and-so is talking now, so be quiet and listen like she did when you were talking," but that's pretty straightforward.
Then we do the lesson. I really like interactive lessons, which is one thing Spirit Play does well -- many lessons come with figurines or laminated illustrations that can be spread out in the middle of the circle (or table) as you read the story. I like to hand one or two items to each kid and have them place them in the middle when we reach that point in the story. It can cause a little disruption if they play with the figures, but it helps keep their attention since they want to know when it's their turn to set up their illustration.
Spirit Play is designed so that after the story, you ask questions about its moral lesson, but I have never found this very effective. It works better to ask some questions as you go, and only ask one or two afterwards, as a sort of summing up.
Then we generally do an activity, and then snack and free play. The rule in Spirit Play is that if you make a mess, you clean it up yourself -- the kids usually need to be reminded of this, but they have never really argued, probably because they can see that it's a fair rule.
7. List elements that can be added or emphasized more during class time. For example: UU identity(feeling of being connected to Unitarian Universalist history and its mission of affirming and promoting its seven principles and six sources), meditation, social mission, music/singing, etc.):
I think music would be nice -- and by music I mean participatory songs, not just listening to CDs -- but I am not sure how to do that. An added emphasis on being UU, and on how that means we teach and support values like acceptance, tolerance, community, a search for truth, etc., would be nice -- that way we're teaching our religion via looking at other religions, instead of just teaching other religions. This is one reason I really like the opening ritual -- chalice lighting, opening words, joys & sorrows -- because it makes that sense of community TANGIBLE instead of just something we talk about and don't put into practice.
8. Similarly, list elements during class that can be shortened or deemphasized:
Actually, all our lessons were too short, so I have nothing to say here! But I think that interactivity and participation are key qualities, so anything that is too much like a lecture should probably be trimmed or intercut with questions to keep kids' attention from wandering.
I feel like sharing my responses. *grin*
1. Describe your expectations when you signed up to teach this semester. Did teaching meet your expectations? Why or why not?
I expected to spend time with children, read stories, lead chalice lighting and joys & sorrows, manage arts & crafts and keep an eye on free play, serve snack, clean up, ask questions and try to keep classroom order, be rewarded by the company of children, probably have a few awkward moments while coordinating with other teachers, and have a lot of good moments coordinating with other teachers.
That is pretty much what happened. :-)
2. Give details about a time when you were teaching on Sunday and you were feeling really good about it.
Well, just last week we had no lesson plan -- the official curriculum said to maybe reread stories from previous lessons, or talk about questions we've considered over the year -- so I brought in a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories instead and read "How the Whale Got His Throat." It was very fun, since the story is written with the intent to read it aloud, and it can easily be made interactive by pausing now and then to ask questions like, "Why do you think the 'Stute Fish told the Whale to try eating a man?" or, "So what do you think the sailor did then?"
I really like it when I feel the class is all together paying attention to one thing -- I also like to interact with the kids one-on-one, but there's a danger of ignoring the quieter kids that way, so it's nice when everyone is on the same page.
3. Share about another time when you were teaching on Sunday and you were not feeling good about it.
Oh, several times I was extremely frustrated by the curriculum stories. You see, a lot of the lessons (especially early in the year) were just WAY too short, so we had a hard time stretching the lesson to a reasonable length. Also, the Spirit Play curriculum does not come with activities, so we had to make up our own arts & crafts ideas all the time. But it was the stories that bothered me most, because many of them fall horribly flat when read aloud, and/or they fail the basic five-year-old logic test -- i.e., five-year-olds can and will point out all the plot holes and will then ignore the moral lesson because they find the story dumb and boring.
Also, when we used stories from other cultures, there was often not enough cultural background information provided. I noticed this especially when we did the story about Ganesh, and the story of the two sisters from the Capilano area around Vancouver. This is bad and should be fixed.
4. Put into plain words how you feel you did as a teacher in our RE program? What are your strengths and weaknesses as an RE teacher?
I love teaching. It can be a little stressful sometimes, if the class is kind of dead or if the class is hyperactive, but I love it anyway.
I am very good at stories! :-) I am also fairly good at helping keep a class together when somebody else is the lead teacher -- things like calling someone's attention back to whoever is speaking, reminding kids not to interrupt, and so on. I am not so good at asking for help when I am the lead teacher, because I am something of a perfectionist and I want to do everything myself, even though I know that's silly. I am also not that great at arranging or coordinating schedules with fellow teachers.
5. Did you feel communicated with/supported enough to do your teaching well? What are your suggestions for further support and communication for next year?
I definitely felt communicated with. The only problem (and it was extremely minor, and at least half my own fault anyway) was when [the assistant DRE] went on vacation and I didn't realize that we didn't already have 'stages of life' illustration cards. So I didn't make any beforehand, and had to enlist the kids to help draw people at various ages. This actually worked out well, since it made the lesson more participatory and interactive, and I really should have asked about the lesson supplies earlier anyway.
6. Share some of your ideas for classroom procedures (how to organize and focus students)?
It is much easier to get a class started on a good note now that we're not 'babysitting' kids for fifteen or twenty minutes before the rest of the class comes up from the sanctuary. That was always tricky to deal with, since we had some kids doing free play, and then the new arrivals wanted to join in instead of gathering and calming down to start the lesson.
Anyway, I like that we always start with chalice lighting, an opening, and then usually a pass-the-squeeze. Then we do joys & sorrows; often you have to remind the kids not to interrupt each other, by saying things like, "Okay, So-and-so is talking now, so be quiet and listen like she did when you were talking," but that's pretty straightforward.
Then we do the lesson. I really like interactive lessons, which is one thing Spirit Play does well -- many lessons come with figurines or laminated illustrations that can be spread out in the middle of the circle (or table) as you read the story. I like to hand one or two items to each kid and have them place them in the middle when we reach that point in the story. It can cause a little disruption if they play with the figures, but it helps keep their attention since they want to know when it's their turn to set up their illustration.
Spirit Play is designed so that after the story, you ask questions about its moral lesson, but I have never found this very effective. It works better to ask some questions as you go, and only ask one or two afterwards, as a sort of summing up.
Then we generally do an activity, and then snack and free play. The rule in Spirit Play is that if you make a mess, you clean it up yourself -- the kids usually need to be reminded of this, but they have never really argued, probably because they can see that it's a fair rule.
7. List elements that can be added or emphasized more during class time. For example: UU identity(feeling of being connected to Unitarian Universalist history and its mission of affirming and promoting its seven principles and six sources), meditation, social mission, music/singing, etc.):
I think music would be nice -- and by music I mean participatory songs, not just listening to CDs -- but I am not sure how to do that. An added emphasis on being UU, and on how that means we teach and support values like acceptance, tolerance, community, a search for truth, etc., would be nice -- that way we're teaching our religion via looking at other religions, instead of just teaching other religions. This is one reason I really like the opening ritual -- chalice lighting, opening words, joys & sorrows -- because it makes that sense of community TANGIBLE instead of just something we talk about and don't put into practice.
8. Similarly, list elements during class that can be shortened or deemphasized:
Actually, all our lessons were too short, so I have nothing to say here! But I think that interactivity and participation are key qualities, so anything that is too much like a lecture should probably be trimmed or intercut with questions to keep kids' attention from wandering.
