Additional to my Reflection on Collegial Learning, the following spaces were critical to my evolution as a teacher.

Second grade cohort 

My mentor teacher this year was a huge support for me and was a relationship that allowed for a lot of honest conversation, contributing to my teaching practice. Mary Quillen’s support as well as that of the rest of the second grade cohort was instrumental in developing my teaching skills. This second grade teaching cohort has a culture of communication and mutual respect for one another which provided me the space to ask questions and feel supported throughout my inquiry. Specifically with our intervention and guided reading* period daily, there was a lot of communication necessary to best support the students.

*Intervention and guided reading: A daily literacy block where students of similar reading levels across the three second grades can work closely on their individual skills in reading and word study. My intervention and guided reading group started out as a Level M and is now a Level O, working toward Level P.

On-site seminar

Another critical space for inquiry was the weekly on-site seminar which was facilitated by two of my professors, and involved mostly a much-needed time to ask the in-the-moment questions that were best answered by my peers who were also struggling with the same issues. Although this seminar felt informal in some ways, it was very critical to my engagement in the classroom. Each week someone would have a dilemma they needed to work through and, without fail, we would offer suggestions and be able to reference the important texts we were reading in real time.

Two critical texts to this seminar were:

• Conscious Classroom Management: Unlocking the Secrets of Great Teaching – Rick Smith
• To Teach: the journey, in comics: William Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner