1. Caroline Holling

2. 10/12/2022

3. I participated in a one day Responsive Classroom Training Workshop with fellow AT's

4. The responsive classroom training was extremely beneficial to my understanding of the language we use in the classroom, the developmental stages of our students, as well as provided an abundant amount of strategies, energizers and activities to incorporate into the classroom on a daily basis. I feel like I learned a lot from other AT’s experiences from other schools as well as the Responsive Classroom speakers own experience. The way she spoke inspired me to want to change the way in which I speak, phrase questions and use language at different times in the classroom.

The training helped me think about my guiding principles within the classroom: which ones stand out to me the most, which ones I hope to prioritize in the classroom, and which ones I feel like are going well already. The two that stood out to me the most are: How we teach is as important as what we teach, and what we know about our students-individually, culturally and developmentally- informs our expectations, reactions and attitudes about those students. These two really principles resonated with me. I look forward to continuing incorporating them into my practice as well as looking for ways I can enhance these principles in the classroom, as well as others. For example, partnering with families- knowing them and valuing their contributions- is as important as knowing the children we teach, and teaching social and emotional skills is as important as teaching academic content.

Thinking about the four domains of responsive classroom also is a really helpful way for me to think about running a classroom. Always keeping in mind developmentally responsive teaching, maintaining a positive community, effective classroom management and making sure academics are engaging by designing lessons around learning objectives so learning is clear and purposeful. This aspect of Responsive Classroom, the notes I took and the examples given in the workshop highlighted the importance of these domains for me. I plan to refer back to them constantly and use examples from them when planning, teaching and talking with students. I also feel like I have a more concrete understanding of interactive learning structures and why they are so important to incorporate into the classroom on a daily basis. It was very interesting to not only see examples of these but understand the background and WHY these are beneficial to students, their growth and their learning (academically and socially).

Interactive modeling was a major component of the workshop that really resonated with me. This is a strategy I have used throughout my time teaching, however seeing the impact it has on the students through videos and examples with concrete evidence really stood out to me. Although I had an idea of how beneficial interactive modeling can be, this training opened my eyes even more to the benefits of interactive modeling not just in academics, but also when teaching social and emotional skills, norms in the classroom, expectations, or strategies when dealing with conflict.

Having a better understanding of how to use teacher language when was a goal of mine when entering the workshop. Teacher language has always been something I want to work on as it does not come as naturally, especially when dealing with stressful or upsetting situations. I felt like I gained better perspective on envisioning language, reinforcing language, reminding language and redirecting language; as well as when to use which, situations when they are useful and prompts for each. This is something I am very much looking forward to implementing into the classroom on a daily basis.

Overall, I am very excited to incorporate my findings from the training yesterday into my teaching practice. I am so grateful for the opportunity and feel very lucky to have been a part of it. I will continue to use the resources on the website and learn from more experienced teachers.

6. I would definitely recommend this opportunity. I felt like it was an amazing experience all around, very insightful, collaborative, and beneficial to hear the science and background behind why responsive classroom works and how to implement it into the daily routine.

7. https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/