Carol Vaage's Class

This is my first year of teaching  two half-day kindergarten programs at St. Monica School in Edmonton. This community is so different from the high-need multicultural kindergarten programs that I have been teaching for the past ten years. These children respond to all ideas and prompts quickly and integrate concepts into their past experience. They have had numerous experiences before entering school - many have traveled, all have had quality parent interactions, as well as being read to on a consistent basis since infancy. These children are starting their kindergarten years where the best of my other classes were finishing their kindergarten years. It has been a challenge to adapt the speed and delivery of ideas to accommodate such a different clientele. 

My morning class has 23 children, including some very strong and opinionated little people. We spend much time negotiating and problem-solving to keep things running smoothly. They are curious, interested and keen to learn. My afternoon class has 18 children and has a completely different flavor to it. We have two high-needs children who each have their own developmental assistant to attend to them and help integrate them into the normal functioning of our program. In January we will have one more assistant to work with a child who needs extra attention for expressive and receptive language development. The afternoon children, apart from a couple of keeners, are more mellow, and far more interested in the social aspect of kindergarten rather than the intellectual part. Every story time, I hear these words, "Can we go play now?" It's interesting to again note the uniqueness of each classroom community. The challenge for each kindergarten teacher is how to work within the unique flavour for the best learning environment.

Within our school, we have four kindergarten programs - three rooms/teachers, and three grade one rooms. So we have the most amazing environment in all of Alberta, I'm sure! Our administration, our parent groups, and our staff are all sincerely committed to excellence in education with the CHILD coming first and foremost. Decisions are made in the interests of the children. Our physical environment is incredible with children's precious furniture and artifacts to stimulate and support in the way that the environment is the third teacher. It helps keep the atmosphere positive and charged with energy . The staff are amazing! Each one is so excellent - it is incredible, challenging, and supporting all at the same time. I continue to be amazed by the understanding I receive when I express a pedagogical issue - all teachers are on the same wave-length. Children first - what is right for the child? It is so ultimately satisfying to be working in this environment!

What is even more amazing is that the three of us kindergarten teachers are working collaboratively. Each of us comes from a unique background and experience and we love to share our ideas and work together to make things even better than we had done individually before. We have had combined and shared field trips. We've brought all four classes together for some experiences. We have shared classes, whereby one teacher has a different class - i.e. switch classes. We thought of the richness each of brings with our specialties and our different styles and classrooms, and decided that for our children to share in this richness, we would share our expertise by trading children. The 84 kindergarten in St. Monica school know all three teachers, and think of us all as their teachers... This is dramatically new, isn't it? We plan on exchanging at least once a month to keep this growth experience continuing.

I have had 15 years of teaching kindergarten and grade one. I have 7 years of University, 4 of which were specially focused in Early Childhood Education. I did my Master's Thesis on "Children's Writing Emerging Through Play" and intensive course work and projects on Early Literacy. I have initiated 7 Telecollaborative Projects integrating technology into the classroom, and participated in 2 others. I have published one children's book, Bibi and the Bull, and give numerous presentations around Alberta on early literacy, technology and author topics. I am currently working on an Early Childhood Education Council publication on Early Literacy. Student teachers from the University or from the ECD program at Grant MacEwan College have been consistently welcomed into my classroom - I learn as much from them as they learn from me. I have an open-door policy where parents are welcomed in at any time. I have been truly amazed at the level of parent involvement at this school!

My dream and goal for this year is to try and introduce more Reggio ideas into my program - especially the representing and the documentation. I already have the emergent curriculum, but know where I can continue to grow. It is my hope, too, that by the end of this project, we can see some commonalities throughout our programs that we can summarize and clarify what literacy in kindergarten might look like.