Homeroom
“There’s so much growth from the beginning of the year to the end, when they can read and write,” she said. “I get to be there when they have so many aha moments!”
But Budlow, who is in her second year at Muñoz-Marin Elementary in North Philadelphia and her fourth as a teacher, didn’t always know that she would be guiding some of the littlest learners. The dance and public health and human behavior double major said she graduated from the University of Maryland with a lot of interests but no clear career path. (And the fact that she graduated—virtually—in that first locked-down spring of the pandemic certainly didn’t help.)
In the year that followed, she tried out different jobs—census taker, election volunteer, restaurant worker—but the one that felt most comfortable was teaching dance at a socially distanced summer camp for the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore.
“I had done a thesis in undergrad about performing arts in urban education spaces, and I [enjoyed] teaching dance, so I thought, ‘Maybe I should apply for Teach for America, because it combines a lot of my interests?’ But I hadn’t really considered being a teacher before that.”
Between her Teach for America assignment in a second-grade classroom at KIPP’s West Philadelphia Elementary Academy and her concurrent night classes as part of Penn GSE’s Urban Teaching Residency (UTR), Budlow realized not only that she wanted to work in education, but that she could make the biggest impact on the youngest students.
“They are so excited once they learn that they can do things on their own, because when they first come to class, they don’t know how to tie their shoes and they maybe sometimes need a reminder to go to the bathroom,” she said. “The first thing a lot my students tell me is, ‘I just want you to know, I don’t know how to read.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s OK, that’s the whole point of this year. We’re going to learn together.’”
During the first week of the new school year, as she prepared for her 15 new kindergarteners, Budlow welcomed us into her cheerful, sunlit classroom to share some of the items that have meant the most to her on her journey in early childhood education.
Our Alums in Their Spaces
Our Alums in Their Spaces
“There’s so much growth from the beginning of the year to the end, when they can read and write,” she said. “I get to be there when they have so many aha moments!”
But Budlow, who is in her second year at Muñoz-Marin Elementary in North Philadelphia and her fourth as a teacher, didn’t always know that she would be guiding some of the littlest learners. The dance and public health and human behavior double major said she graduated from the University of Maryland with a lot of interests but no clear career path. (And the fact that she graduated—virtually—in that first locked-down spring of the pandemic certainly didn’t help.)
In the year that followed, she tried out different jobs—census taker, election volunteer, restaurant worker—but the one that felt most comfortable was teaching dance at a socially distanced summer camp for the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore.
“I had done a thesis in undergrad about performing arts in urban education spaces, and I [enjoyed] teaching dance, so I thought, ‘Maybe I should apply for Teach for America, because it combines a lot of my interests?’ But I hadn’t really considered being a teacher before that.”
Between her Teach for America assignment in a second-grade classroom at KIPP’s West Philadelphia Elementary Academy and her concurrent night classes as part of Penn GSE’s Urban Teaching Residency (UTR), Budlow realized not only that she wanted to work in education, but that she could make the biggest impact on the youngest students.
“They are so excited once they learn that they can do things on their own, because when they first come to class, they don’t know how to tie their shoes and they maybe sometimes need a reminder to go to the bathroom,” she said. “The first thing a lot my students tell me is, ‘I just want you to know, I don’t know how to read.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s OK, that’s the whole point of this year. We’re going to learn together.’”
During the first week of the new school year, as she prepared for her 15 new kindergarteners, Budlow welcomed us into her cheerful, sunlit classroom to share some of the items that have meant the most to her on her journey in early childhood education.
The “Never Give Up” pillow was a hand-me-down from a teacher who was leaving my school after my first year. It was in her calm-down, cozy corner. I went “shopping” in the stuff she was giving away and picked it out for my own cozy corner. I want my students to feel like learning and reading is comfortable, and that you can get cozy and do it, and it’s fun. The puppets are their reading buddies. They take a puppet and a book and read the story to their puppet buddy. It helps kids develop their reading skills when they practice reading out loud. The puppets are a fun way to build that skill.
I run a ballet club here at Muñoz-Marin. I’ve actually run a ballet club at every school I’ve worked at, and it’s a point of pride that the ballet club is still going strong at KIPP—I got another teacher to run it. I started the club because my undergrad research showed me how beneficial extracurricular arts programming is for kids’ socioemotional learning and how it can contribute to their academic success. When I did my master’s research, I did a case study on my ballet club, and I got to hear more from students about the ways this after-school arts programming impacted them. We have a teacher here who has daughters who do ballet, and she loves to make the costumes, so she made costumes for our ballet club. But on the day of the performance one kid didn’t show up, so I wore her costume. That was my tutu for the ballet show.
This is me at my Penn graduation with Jen Valerio, GRD’24, (left) and Gill Maimon (right). They taught my “Methods” class in UTR. The program has a lot of first-year teachers, and everyone is working in the classroom while they’re in school. And we would come into class on Tuesday nights, and it was good for the soul, because they would help us with skills we could use in the classroom the next day. Something we examined deeply in class that really impacts my teaching practice is that all kids are “math people” and “reading people.” They are capable of so much, and we, as the adults in their village, have to do our best to foster an environment where they can succeed. We also learned a lot about how to care for the whole child, creating a strong academic community where kids know they are important and that what they think and feel matters. I feel like it was in that class that I realized I really like teaching, and I really want to stay in education.
Jen Valerio told me—and I also read articles about it in one of my classes at Penn—that a lot of teachers who stay in the profession for a long time have different strategies for when things get tough, and one of them is to have “a happy folder.” It’s an easily accessible place where you keep notes from kids or parents and drawings. I started one, and it is helpful. I make a memory book each year with my class, and that’s in here, too.