Background
Emeryville is a tiny city wedged between Oakland and Berkeley in Northern California. If you blink, you might miss the city. What would likely catch your eyes are the big corporations that Emeryville houses such as Pixar, Ikea, and Cliff Bars, and the newly built 7.6 acres of land that contain the Emeryville Center of Community Life.1 Emeryville Center of Community Life is the home of the one K-8 school and one high school that make up the whole Emeryville Unified School District.
The school relocated at the beginning of 2016 school year. That year was also the first year merging all grades into one location. Big changes come with growing pains and decisions to make. Last year, the school piloted comprehensive Benchmark and National Geographic curriculums, both including reading and writing instructions. Since there was not a district-wide mandated writing curriculum at that time, teachers had free rein to decide which curriculum to use. That meant that some teachers used Benchmark’s writing curriculum, some used National Geographic, while others continue to use curriculums from the past such as Lucy Calkin’s Unit of Study for their classroom’s writing program. While freedom to choose was great, the lack of professional development in writing left new teachers, like myself, overwhelmed with questions and scavenging to find the best way to support the students’ writing.
Furthermore, last year my kindergarteners had only 1 trimester of art, which happened once a week for 50 minutes. Starting next year, because of hiring issues, my school will not have an art teacher, which means that my students will not be having any art classes. I can foresee that not having art can be harmful for my students’ development because some students learn best through the arts.
Anna Yates, my elementary school, has a diverse population of 262 students.2 The majority of the students at the school are African American students, with a mix of Hispanics, Whites, Asians, two or more race and Pacific Islander. The school diversity is reflected in my classroom, which is a factor I constantly keep in mind as I plan my lessons, to ensure that the lessons are culturally and personally relevant to my students.
For many of my kindergarteners, their first exposure to formal writing is when they step into the class on their first day of kindergarten. While some of my students are English-speaking students, I also have students who recently emigrated from countries such as India and Yemen. 20% of my students speak a second language at home such as Punjabi and Arabic and are identified as English Language Learners. Although writing presents special challenges for the English Language Learners, writing is still one of the most challenging subjects for everyone to grasp and master.
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