Today was my last day at the elementary school. It was sad to be leaving but I had a great experience and I’m glad I got the chance to work with these children. Today was great because I only had 2 children that I was working with, when I usually have 4. I realized how much easier it is to work with just a few students and how much more they get out of the exercises because they feel like they are getting more attention and they can stay on task. I know that for teachers it is rare that you ever get prolonged one on one time with a student or even time with them in small groups. I felt like I got to know their personalities better today because I wasn’t wasting my time trying to keep 4 kids on task, and in their seats and paying attention to the lesson.
I think this experience has helped to shape my teacher identity tremendously. I have learned about ways to control the children as a class and to get their attention quickly without yelling out to them. One trick that my teacher uses is to turn the lights off, this immediately quiets the kids down and everyone looks toward the light switch to see what happened. This provides the teacher a few minutes of attention to give directions or tell the kids something important. Another one of these tricks is the teacher holds up a peace sign with her 2 fingers and says “peace and quiet”, all the students stop what they’re doing and hold up their peace signs until the whole class is doing it and being quiet. One of the last ways I observed that the teacher gets her student’s attention is by saying “Stop, Look, and Listen…” in the tune of ‘skunk in the barnyard’ when the children hear this they all go “OK” at the same time and pay attention. These are fun ways to get the kids to listen and to pay attention without having to yell or talk over them.
In this classroom when a child answers a question perfectly, the teacher will say “You hit the nail..” and the class will finish “Right on the head!”. I think this is a great way to reward a child for participating and getting an answer correct, because it does not have the same effect as hearing “good job, your right, that’s correct” it gets the whole class involved and makes the student who answered correctly feel proud.
During this experience I have really noticed how yelling at the children as a means of control fails to work. In the art room, next to the reading room where we prepare for our visit, the teacher is constantly screaming at her class. It is obvious that the children do not respect her or listen to her because they continue to talk to one another while she screams. It makes me think that she hates her job because all she does all day is yell at her students, and it never works to get them under control. I do not want to be a teacher that must yell at my students to keep them quiet. I really valued this experience and can’t wait to get back into the school setting to work with more students.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Post 4
The last visit I had to my elementary school was very different. I am helping out with the Walk to Intervention in the kindergarten classes helping to teach the students how to read. Last week the students were assessed to see who should move on to the next skill and who needs to repeat a skill. I was helping to give the assessments and it was very interesting to see how well some students did and how poorly others did. These children were at all different reading levels and yet all in the same classroom. It made me realize how frustrating it must be for the teacher to plan a lesson because of the range of ability she has in that one classroom. This week we had not yet resumed Walk to Intervention because they had not yet made new groups, so I was in the classroom helping out and observing. I was given a group of 3 boys and 3 girls and a stack of cards with pictures and letter tiles. The goal of the lesson was to have the students spell out the 3 letter word that was in the picture with the tiles. It was a disaster. First of all, these students still can’t distinguish between some letters for example a lowercase p or q, so even when I told them which letter they needed for their word they couldn’t find it by themselves in the pile. In addition, some of the students still don’t know what sound each letter makes or how to sound out a word. A few of the students got the hang out it with my help but others realized that they were not going to be able to do the activity and gave up before they even started.
I remember on my first day in the classroom the teacher was trying to get a hold of the parent of a student who had been absent for a few days. After calling a few different numbers, all of which were incorrect or unavailable, she gave up in frustration. She explained to me afterward how worried she was, if the child had been hurt or sick at school there would be no way to get in contact with their parent. Some other challenges with communicating with parents may be language. If your student’s parent speaks a different language or has a hard time communicating in English, it would make it very difficult to inform them on what their child needs at home to help them in school. According to Claude Goldenberg’s article Teaching English Language Learners, the majority of the parents of ELLs were not born in the U.S. so for a school that has a majority of Latino students there is a good chance that English is a second language for many of the parents. If I was going to be working in an elementary school where Spanish is spoken frequently, I would really try to learn as much Spanish as I could. Not only to be able to understand and communicate better with my students and their parents, but to show them that I really am doing everything that I can to help them out and make things easier.
I remember on my first day in the classroom the teacher was trying to get a hold of the parent of a student who had been absent for a few days. After calling a few different numbers, all of which were incorrect or unavailable, she gave up in frustration. She explained to me afterward how worried she was, if the child had been hurt or sick at school there would be no way to get in contact with their parent. Some other challenges with communicating with parents may be language. If your student’s parent speaks a different language or has a hard time communicating in English, it would make it very difficult to inform them on what their child needs at home to help them in school. According to Claude Goldenberg’s article Teaching English Language Learners, the majority of the parents of ELLs were not born in the U.S. so for a school that has a majority of Latino students there is a good chance that English is a second language for many of the parents. If I was going to be working in an elementary school where Spanish is spoken frequently, I would really try to learn as much Spanish as I could. Not only to be able to understand and communicate better with my students and their parents, but to show them that I really am doing everything that I can to help them out and make things easier.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Post 3
The students in the class in which I am tutoring are very well behaved. They all listen to the teacher and do as they are told, with the exception of a few troublemakers. They are always so excited to see us when we come to tutor and are curious about what poem we’re going to read and which game we are going to play that day. They still have that desire to learn that fades more and more as you progress through school, and it is very welcoming to see how much they really enjoy me being there.
According to Infoworks the school that I visit is 58% Hispanic, 30% African American, 7% White, and 5% Asian and Native American combined. These percentages surprised me because the classroom I am in has a majority of African American students. I have noticed that there are a few students in the class that sound like English is their second language, they have slight accents. Most of the African American students speak a watered down version of “black English” which they most likely hear at home. For the most part the students act and interact just as any other 5 year olds would around the country. They laugh with each other and have fun, bicker about whose turn it is to go first, and tattle to the teacher when someone steals their crayon.
It is surprising to me that with over half of the school population being Hispanic, only 24% of the students get ESL teaching. On the first day I was at my school to tutor I walked by a classroom in which the teacher and students were speaking Spanish. It caught me off guard at first but the more I observed the more I noticed signs and posters in the hallways that were written in both English and Spanish. I also noticed at the beginning of the school day and in the main office, that some parents were having conversations with their children in Spanish. It made me think how hard it must be for these young children to have to speak one language at home and then come to school and learn in a totally new one. But it is not only hard for the students as Claude Goldenberg discusses in his article Teaching English Language Learners. It is also hard for the teachers and staff to figure out what is the best way to teach these children so that they don’t fall behind in school. I think it is hard for the teachers to not only have to learn how to teach these students to learn in a foreign language, but also to take these students, 93% of whom are not white, and teach them how to be successful in the white man’s world. To teach them how to abide by the codes of the culture of power so they can be successful in their lives, that is the real challenge in the classroom.
According to Infoworks the school that I visit is 58% Hispanic, 30% African American, 7% White, and 5% Asian and Native American combined. These percentages surprised me because the classroom I am in has a majority of African American students. I have noticed that there are a few students in the class that sound like English is their second language, they have slight accents. Most of the African American students speak a watered down version of “black English” which they most likely hear at home. For the most part the students act and interact just as any other 5 year olds would around the country. They laugh with each other and have fun, bicker about whose turn it is to go first, and tattle to the teacher when someone steals their crayon.
It is surprising to me that with over half of the school population being Hispanic, only 24% of the students get ESL teaching. On the first day I was at my school to tutor I walked by a classroom in which the teacher and students were speaking Spanish. It caught me off guard at first but the more I observed the more I noticed signs and posters in the hallways that were written in both English and Spanish. I also noticed at the beginning of the school day and in the main office, that some parents were having conversations with their children in Spanish. It made me think how hard it must be for these young children to have to speak one language at home and then come to school and learn in a totally new one. But it is not only hard for the students as Claude Goldenberg discusses in his article Teaching English Language Learners. It is also hard for the teachers and staff to figure out what is the best way to teach these children so that they don’t fall behind in school. I think it is hard for the teachers to not only have to learn how to teach these students to learn in a foreign language, but also to take these students, 93% of whom are not white, and teach them how to be successful in the white man’s world. To teach them how to abide by the codes of the culture of power so they can be successful in their lives, that is the real challenge in the classroom.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Tutoring gets easier every time that I go. I am much more comfortable with the classroom environment and with my students, as they are with me. Compared to the horror stories I hear from fellow classmates that are tutoring in the same school, my children are very well behaved. I am in a kindergarten class and we have been working on isolation, or recognizing the first sound in a word for the past three weeks now and they seem to have mastered the skill very well. All three of the students that I work with every week are African American.
One of the first things that I noticed when I was first introduced to the classroom, aside from the fact that the majority of the class was African American, was that these children had very different sounding names then those that I was used to. Going through school with a number of children named Brittany, Michael, and Christopher, it was interesting to hear what unique names these children had. Each culture has common names that fit their heritage. If I said I had three children in my class named Juan, Jamal, and Daniel, you would probably bet that you could guess their nationality without even seeing them. I have to keep in mind that even though it is hard for me to pronounce and remember how to say some of their names, it may be just as hard for them to remember the name Grace. Another cultural barrier is the different ways of showing authority in the way that I speak to them. Lisa Delpit describes the different commands that children of different races respond to best and why. As a teacher this may pose a problem and I’m going to have to test out different ways of speaking to see which is most effective with the students I will have. Being in a classroom with a majority of African American students has made me think a lot more about people before I judge them.
Thinking back to what one of my classmates wrote in her blog about a little girl having dirty hair, my first instinct was to think what bad parents she had to allow their child to go to school like that. But when I took a step back and really thought about it, I came up with many reasons why that little girl had not had her hair washed. Also, I have observed the children in my class dancing like Beyonce and singing lyrics from rap and hip-hop songs. At first I thought it was sad that children so young were acting in such provocative and sexual ways and that it was a reflection of bad parenting. But really society is to blame. These children are like sponges taking in everything that they see and hear, they don’t really know that what they are doing may have other meanings and messages. What I realized was that most of this behavior is a reflection on society, not on the parents. Ten years ago it was little girls wanting to wear belly shirts and be like Brittany Spears, today it’s singing rap songs and dancing like Beyonce, and the cycle will only continue.
One of the first things that I noticed when I was first introduced to the classroom, aside from the fact that the majority of the class was African American, was that these children had very different sounding names then those that I was used to. Going through school with a number of children named Brittany, Michael, and Christopher, it was interesting to hear what unique names these children had. Each culture has common names that fit their heritage. If I said I had three children in my class named Juan, Jamal, and Daniel, you would probably bet that you could guess their nationality without even seeing them. I have to keep in mind that even though it is hard for me to pronounce and remember how to say some of their names, it may be just as hard for them to remember the name Grace. Another cultural barrier is the different ways of showing authority in the way that I speak to them. Lisa Delpit describes the different commands that children of different races respond to best and why. As a teacher this may pose a problem and I’m going to have to test out different ways of speaking to see which is most effective with the students I will have. Being in a classroom with a majority of African American students has made me think a lot more about people before I judge them.
Thinking back to what one of my classmates wrote in her blog about a little girl having dirty hair, my first instinct was to think what bad parents she had to allow their child to go to school like that. But when I took a step back and really thought about it, I came up with many reasons why that little girl had not had her hair washed. Also, I have observed the children in my class dancing like Beyonce and singing lyrics from rap and hip-hop songs. At first I thought it was sad that children so young were acting in such provocative and sexual ways and that it was a reflection of bad parenting. But really society is to blame. These children are like sponges taking in everything that they see and hear, they don’t really know that what they are doing may have other meanings and messages. What I realized was that most of this behavior is a reflection on society, not on the parents. Ten years ago it was little girls wanting to wear belly shirts and be like Brittany Spears, today it’s singing rap songs and dancing like Beyonce, and the cycle will only continue.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
First Few Visits
The first time I went to my school, I got lost on the way there. This just tightened the knot in my stomach even more. I’m always a little nervous going into a new place. After asking a few crossing guards where to go, I finally found the school, and to be honest, it looked a little intimidating. It was a large brick building with not many windows facing the street, and I have yet to see a playground. The surrounding neighborhood consists of small shops, older houses, a hospital, and a few other schools. I was surprised to see how quickly the neighborhoods changed from street to street. One street may be lined with run down houses and old cars, where as two streets down you find upscale houses with BMWs parked in gated driveways. Another observation I made was that many of the parents were walking their children to school instead of driving them, and most of these families were Black or Hispanic.
First going into the school I saw many colorful murals on the walls, along with the student’s artwork and posters written in both Spanish and English. Despite all the color and pictures, my first impression of the school was that it wasn’t very welcoming or nurturing, I got this feeling because of the locks on the doors and the way the secretaries in the main office barked orders at the kids coming in. This feeling changed after being introduced into the classroom, and also after reading Lisa Delpit’s The Silenced Dialogue, learning that everyone has a different way of showing authority over their children. Delpit suggests that African American mothers have a more direct oral style than say a white upper-class mother. So what I interpreted from the secretaries as the harsh yelling of orders at the children, the children may have seen just as someone with authority telling them what to do. If I had been spoken to that way when I was a child in a predominantly white elementary school in South Kingstown, RI, I would have felt as if I had done something wrong or that the secretary was upset with me. But because these children are accustomed to this type of command, they may not have understood it if it was phrased differently.
The classroom was filled with colorful pictures with letters and numbers. There is a reading area where the kids sit on the rug and the teacher reads to them, and there is also an area with tables that have colorful nametags on them where the children do their work. The students were mostly African American and were all very excited to have a visitor in their classroom. I noticed that one girl was wearing wedge high heel shoes which I thought was strange for a kindergartener. Another little girl with her hair in dangling braids with beads on the ends was dancing around like she was in a Beyonce video. All of the children were very attentive to the teacher when she was talking or giving instructions. This made me think that discipline and respect for authority was valued in this school. During the time I’ve been in the classroom I’ve never witnessed a child disobeying a teacher’s command or request.
Although I’ve only been in the classroom twice, I have gotten an overall good vibe from the school, from the teacher, and from the students. Each time I go I get more comfortable with being in the classroom, and can’t wait to see how I feel, and how my feelings have changed toward the school at the end of my time there.
First going into the school I saw many colorful murals on the walls, along with the student’s artwork and posters written in both Spanish and English. Despite all the color and pictures, my first impression of the school was that it wasn’t very welcoming or nurturing, I got this feeling because of the locks on the doors and the way the secretaries in the main office barked orders at the kids coming in. This feeling changed after being introduced into the classroom, and also after reading Lisa Delpit’s The Silenced Dialogue, learning that everyone has a different way of showing authority over their children. Delpit suggests that African American mothers have a more direct oral style than say a white upper-class mother. So what I interpreted from the secretaries as the harsh yelling of orders at the children, the children may have seen just as someone with authority telling them what to do. If I had been spoken to that way when I was a child in a predominantly white elementary school in South Kingstown, RI, I would have felt as if I had done something wrong or that the secretary was upset with me. But because these children are accustomed to this type of command, they may not have understood it if it was phrased differently.
The classroom was filled with colorful pictures with letters and numbers. There is a reading area where the kids sit on the rug and the teacher reads to them, and there is also an area with tables that have colorful nametags on them where the children do their work. The students were mostly African American and were all very excited to have a visitor in their classroom. I noticed that one girl was wearing wedge high heel shoes which I thought was strange for a kindergartener. Another little girl with her hair in dangling braids with beads on the ends was dancing around like she was in a Beyonce video. All of the children were very attentive to the teacher when she was talking or giving instructions. This made me think that discipline and respect for authority was valued in this school. During the time I’ve been in the classroom I’ve never witnessed a child disobeying a teacher’s command or request.
Although I’ve only been in the classroom twice, I have gotten an overall good vibe from the school, from the teacher, and from the students. Each time I go I get more comfortable with being in the classroom, and can’t wait to see how I feel, and how my feelings have changed toward the school at the end of my time there.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
First Post
My name is Grace, I'm from South Kingstown, RI. I'm a sophomore and I just transferred to RIC from Keene State College in NH. I'm an elementary education major. In my free time I enjoy reading novels, playing sports, swimming in the ocean, and eating good food.
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