The Possibilities of the Elementary Classroom

I love teaching elementary. Keep in mind, I may be biased since that is all I know.  What other teaching position gives you the freedom to integrate content areas and real-world experiences for a richer experience for students? The beauty of teaching engineering to elementary students for the last six years allowed me to do much the same just through the engineering lens.  As the engineering teacher, a specialist, I did miss the opportunity general classroom educators have to take a lesson a little longer if needed. The rewards of teaching elementary engineering far outweighed the challenges of being a specialist.

Each week, I saw 22 classes which was approximately 570 students, depending on current enrollment.  While this was a challenge for learning names and managing materials, it allowed me to build relationships and learning with students over the course of six years, kindergarten through fifth grade.  I knew exactly what students were learning in the earlier grades of engineering and could build upon that in subsequent years, developing a scope and sequence that was fairly extensive for the short time I had them each week.

My first year teaching engineering had little resemblance to what my sixth year teaching engineering looked like.  As with any teaching position, it takes time to find what works for the students and what the teacher can manage.  I loved the freedom I had in my classroom.  Not all educators can say that.  However, with good administrators, I had freedom in the general classroom but even more so in the engineering classroom.  The freedom created a sense of empowerment that allowed me to try things I hadn't tried before, especially with class sizes as large as 32 students.

My instruction had definitely morphed into facilitation.  My goal was to have students constructing their own knowledge through individual and collaborative challenges.  As students developed their skills in building from instructions, designing 3D prints, using robotics, programming on Raspberry Pi and more, I wanted them to attempt to combine some of these skills for open-ended projects. I wanted students to learn to identify problems, rather than me giving them a problem, and then develop a solution based on their accumulated skills.  Did this always work out?  No, but when it did the results were powerful.

I still feel as though I have many practices and projects I would like to try in the elementary classroom.  I would love to hear about some of the practices and projects you have tried as well.  There just seems to be a limitless amount of possibilities for the elementary classroom.