Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Sacco.
Hi Stephanie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My experience with Teach for America, and the kids I met through my initial year teaching kindergarten in Memphis in 2016, caused me to fall in love with teaching young children. Initially, I had no interest in being a teacher. I did not study education in college, and I only applied to be in Teach for America to try to get a scholarship to law school. However, I was lucky enough to be placed in kindergarten, which quickly became my happy place. I wanted to become a lawyer to try to help others, and I quickly realized that by being a kindergarten teacher, I can do what I always wanted and even more. Not only do I have students and families I can support throughout the year and beyond, but I found a calling that is exciting, demanding, and so rewarding. Kindergarteners love school and love their teacher, and I love being a part of their joy in learning each day. I taught first grade for a year-and-a-half during the pandemic, and I enjoyed it. But, I missed my favorite grade; I could not wait to get back to kindergarten. Now that I have been back in kindergarten for a few years, I feel lucky to do what I love every day.
I loved school while growing up, and I loved to read. My grandmother was a teacher, and my mom was a substitute at my elementary school when I was a kid. I was very lucky to have so many supports throughout my schooling.
In elementary school, my school’s student body was mostly white. Then, in middle school, I was bussed to a school farther from my neighborhood for the gifted program. There, it was apparent that there was a divide between the students in the gifted program, who were mostly white, and the students in the regular education program, who were mostly Black. I also saw how teachers were lenient with me and my fellow classmates in the gifted program, while they were often swift to give a consequence to a student who was a part of the “regular ed” student body. This disparity was obvious to me, and I could not believe it was happening at my school. Twelve-year-old me slowly began to realize this didn’t just happen at my school; it happened across the country. This absolutely influenced me in high school, college, and after, when I began teaching. I know firsthand how important it is to “always assume the best” about each and every student, no matter what.
Kids need to know how to learn and love to learn. My personal mission statement is to teach kids how to think, rather than what to think, and to love to think. In focusing on the process of learning and the inherent struggle that comes with grappling with an unknown answer or difficult problem, students begin to develop into critical thinkers. My students lead daily Morning Meetings, where we engage in mood check-ins, partner turn and talk discussions, community-builder activities like short games or songs, and goal setting. Through community-building and intentional social-emotional learning (SEL) instruction in my classroom, I foster a learning environment where students support students.
Kindergarten teachers are often thought of as nose-wipers and pant-buttoners. While the antiquated ideas of a kindergarten teacher being a babysitter is certainly incorrect, these small moments where my students need assistance with difficult tasks are important. They are always teachable moments that relate back to my mission of instilling critical thinking in my students. I am always prompting with more questions, modeling how to complete the task myself, and giving the child space to try and fail.
My classroom was not always like this. When I first began teaching, I thought the best teacher would immediately have all milk cartons opened and have all united laces tied back up in seconds—a superhero for her students who solved every problem that arose in the blink of an eye! Over time, I saw how this practice did not serve my students. By putting the responsibility on their shoulders, students stopped needing to rely on me and started to rely on themselves.
Now, I watch community and critical thinking grow in the classroom from the first day of school, all by five-year-old kiddos, as they support each other in problem-solving. The camaraderie that grows from students always trying together, whether succeeding or failing, is staggering. They grow into learners who are not afraid to explore, take risks, and even make mistakes, because they know they are surrounded by a community who supports their academic and social growth. When this happens, I know my mission is complete.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Educators encounter obstacles and challenges in their classrooms in multitudes every day, but I believe most (in the educator’s control) can be improved or solved by remaining emotionally constant, building buy-in from your students, and creating strong routines. As a kindergarten teacher, I push my students to first try on their own, then ask three friends to try to solve a problem independently, academic, or otherwise, before asking for teacher help. I explicitly teach conflict resolution, and students use the stem, “When you ____, it made me feel ____,” to find solutions on their own.
From tying a shoe to attempting a tricky number bond to writing a persuasive paragraph, my students learn to be okay with productive struggle. Rather than simply doing the task for the child, I am always prompting with more questions, modeling how to complete the task myself, and giving the child space to try and fail. In fact, the failure is something that we learn to celebrate in my classroom, because it gives every child the opportunity to get better. My students have growth mindsets because of my explicit instruction and modeling, and there are countless moments each day where my students engage in struggle and are proud of themselves regardless of if they succeed or fail.
I have always had many students in my classes who have a lot of strong, uncomfortable feelings. There were often explosions of emotions in the classroom, making it difficult for everyone to learn. In addressing this problem, I began to use a chill corner in the classroom as a self-soothing spot for all students.
Now, any student who is feeling an uncomfortable emotion can ask to go to the chill corner. They are explicitly taught how to set a timer for five minutes, how to choose a calm-down strategy, how to belly breathe, etc., so they can independently calm down until they are ready to return to the learning space. I model each calm-down strategy use think-alouds to show how I choose the strategy that will work best for me in the moment. Then, students are ready to start trying this on their own. Not only does this often solve problems with our students experiencing all the big emotions, but it took a lot of issues off my plate as the teacher. Instead of me calming students down or cheering them up, the students are proud to do it on their own in the chill corner. I enjoy working with the “toughest” behavior cases in kindergarten, because I believe I have a knack for helping kindergarteners meet the behavior expectation and fall in love with school/learning.
The best advice I ever received as an educator was, “teach your way out of it.” When I first started teaching, I was constantly fretting about everything, especially when I would get advice from teachers like, “make sure to start strong” and “make sure you have scripted your lessons, because you can’t go back and undo what you’ve already taught.” In the many worried conversations I would then have with my coach, she would calm me down, always telling me to try to worry less because I could always “teach my way out of it.”
This means that whenever I see a problem in the classroom arise, such as interpersonal issues like mean words or lack of personal space, technical issues like a pencil grip or using the “backspace key”, or academic issues like not understanding rhyming words or number bonds, I can always come back the next day with a quick mini-lesson to teach my way out of it. It’s okay to have problems in the classroom; just come back the next day and teach the kiddos how to make it better.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Teaching my kindergarteners about Stax Records of Memphis, Tennessee, only five minutes away from our elementary school, has become the most joyous part of teaching for me. I set a goal to root my classroom and pedagogy in Memphis and its incredible history but was not sure how. A lightbulb clicked when I realized the incredible potential of a year centered around Stax Records.
All year, my students would discover more about mostly Black artists who changed the world with their music. Since Stax was one of, if not the first, major recording studios to allow white and Black musicians to write, play, and record music together, the studio’s rich history would propel students to explore the arts, value diversity, and learn local history, all while listening to some really incredible music.
Now, my classroom is full of hot, buttered Memphis soul. Upon entering, a map in our classroom shows how Soulsville, USA is in Idlewild’s own backyard. Each morning, a different student is selected to “put a record on” our class’s record player, gently handling old LPs without any teacher help. I have collected almost forty Stax artists’ records, with at least one for each of its many talented artists, and we focus on one record each week. The walls of our classroom show the faces of incredible Stax artists and Memphis music venues, and students travel to blended-learning stations under group names like “the Otis Reddings,” “the Carla Thomases,” and “the Booker T. & the MGs.”
Each year, my students become so invested in Stax and its place in the Memphis community. Every Friday, I execute a self-made curriculum surrounding Memphis music and Stax Records. We had a series of “family concerts” at the close of the school year, where I invite students’ musical family members to celebrate our learning with live concerts. We take a field trip to Stax Records, as well as WYXR radio station, where some of my students got the chance to share their love for Stax live on the air. The station manager and a writer for Stax visited our classroom to discuss his work with the kids; he even called famous Stax artist Carla Thomas on the phone to answer students’ questions live from the classroom carpet.
My students are so invested in Stax and its place in the Memphis community. Now, my students’ parents text me saying their child is asking their Alexa to play the Staple Singers or requesting a record player with Isaac Hayes records for their birthday. Other students send me pictures of themselves in front of Stax signs around Memphis announcing the museum’s twentieth anniversary celebration this year. A few students have even begged their parents to take them to Stax over school breaks or weekends, and some now proudly bring Stax notebooks to school or wear Stax t-shirts under their uniforms. It has fostered a love of music and a desire to learn new instruments in many of my students, and it is my greatest pleasure to see each child’s joy as we study local legends. My students have a thirst to learn more about the roots of Memphis soul, and they are proud to be rooted in Memphis.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Folks can continue to support public education by sending your kids to public school, advocating for your neighborhood school and all public schools, and working to get officials elected who do the same. Every child deserves to go to ANY public school and receive the BEST education that will allow them to follow whatever life path they choose as they grow into adults.
I recently read this article and couldn’t agree with this teacher more: https://www.today.com/parents/family/parents-teach-kids-no-kindergarten-rcna202578
^Families can support kindergarten teachers by validating their child’s emotions, teaching critical thinking, and fostering love of learning in their child, while also focusing on the importance of the word “no” when it comes from an authority figure like a teacher.
Finally, consider becoming a teacher! Though the job is not glamorous, it is incredibly rewarding, intellectually challenging, and vital to the success of communities across the country. We need folks to help reframe education as a desirable career, where educators are respected as the highly-trained experts in their field and treated as such.
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