Prompt #4: Kozol

Being assigned to a school in the middle of an urban city made me a little nervous about what I would be walking into. I try not to think of it as a “bad” neighborhood, because I know that is not the case. However, there are several factors that go into that not uncommon “first glance” view. One major issue that leads to this is the media.

The media shows us things that do not seem to be ideal to many people. I may have seen negative things before I went into the school, about the area it was in and immediately jumped to conclusions about what the school would be like. In fact, I had just recently heard of a shooting right outside a high school near where I am visiting. This is something that is hard to forget about completely and go definitely alters any feeling of comfort and safety you make have previously had in the school.

The teachers in the classrooms I am volunteering in seem to not let the outside world influence their styles of teaching. I believe that they are aware of it, and want to push their students to become better than the stereotypical students in that area. In fact, in my most recent visit, the students had a homework assignment that the teacher asked me to collect. There were pictures of items and they had to write the beginning letter of each item. There was a picture that two-thirds of the classroom seemed to have trouble with. The picture was of a tambourine. One boy went over to the teacher in tears and said “I couldn’t do this one, (and pointed at the tambourine) because my mom didn’t know what it was.” A few other students sympathized and told her that their parents also didn’t know. After explaining what it was, and giving them quick tests on other common items around the classroom to prove that they knew how to do the exercise and just got confused on one of them, Mrs. Smith asked the other classroom volunteer and me if we knew what it was, and we told her that we did. This was a challenge because even though she knew she would have to work hard, Mrs. Smith knew she wanted to educate her kids to have the ambition to find out what something is before simply giving up. However, this can also be seen as an advantage because we can teach the students at the lowest level, and help want to build them up to be the best we could be.

This can be related to Jonathan Kozol. Kozol talks about the challenges associated with different classes in schools. He explains that resources are needed to even the playing field for all of education. The better the resources, the better ideas the students will have and the more chance they will grow to be the best student they can be.

Prompt #3: Shor

Shor argues that participation leads to active members of society. Assessments do not often include many elements of participation. However, in Mrs. Brown’s first grade classroom, an interesting way to challenge this notion was found. One of my first visits occurred on the Friday before April vacation. This also happened to be the 100th day of school. The students all throughout the school were engaged in celebration activities of the one hundredth day.

In my classroom, they were making necklaces out of Froot Loops. The teacher put an example on the board. They started with a large piece of construction paper and picked out, as a class, five different colors. They picked red first, On the paper they each drew two red circles, horizontally next to each other. They then picked blue, and underneath the red, drew two blue circles. The next color was green, then purple, then yellow, the process was repeated. Once the circles were drawn, the students had to fill them in with 10 of that color froot loops. When the circles were filled, they need to cut string to make the necklaces. They were given a certain length to fit with the teachers necklace. They then had to string the necklaces by putting ten froot loops at a time to create a pattern. This was interesting to me because it brought about ideas of complex mathematics in a hands-on way. The closer the students’ necklace looked to the teachers, the better ‘grade’ they got on it. They all participated to make this activity work. This assessment was a type that was easy to understand for students in all linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural characteristics and make it easy to participate. This classroom has very different ethnicities. Because the teacher led by example, it was easy for the students to follow. The great thing about it was that even though they all should have been made the same way, there were differences. It was interesting to see this because that means that there was some miscommunication somewhere that someone did not understand the directions. But, since they all were able to participate, they all got a feel and were able to work through the “curious nature” Shor speaks of. This will make students of all ethnicities, according to Shor, productive members of society.

Prompt #2: Dewey

I am in an interesting setting in my kindergarten classroom. I was placed in an English as a Second Language (ESL) Classroom, however; I am a reading buddy, so I do not get to see my teacher teach often. When I enter the classroom, students are usually reading independently while the teacher is doing other things around the classroom.

The environment in the classroom is a friendly one. There are children of all different races and ethnicities. The teacher encourages the students to learn English, but uses their language, the cultural capital that they bring into the classroom, to clarify ideas. I can tell that the teacher is not trying to strip them of the richness of their first language, but encourages them to know both languages. John Dewey challenges the ideas that children all learn the same way. Students do not all learn the same way, and it is up to the culturally competent teachers to see that students need to be treated fairly, but do not all need the same things, and to be able to adjust accordingly.

Looking at the ‘info works’ website almost brought me to tears. In grade 3, no more than two students fit into the “Proficient with Distinction” category. This school, compared to the average Rhode Island elementary schools percentages are very poor. At points, when R.I. schools percentages are at 61% for reading, the school is only at 21%. The students not reaching proficiency in every race, gender, and all other characteristics, is higher than the percent reaching proficiency! That is so sad.

In my group of reading buddies, I have one boy that speaks Spanish, Justin, and the other of an Asian dialect, (I’ve asked him what the language is called, but he says he does not know). Occasionally, we will “picture read” a book. The other day, we were doing it as a group with the teacher and she pointed to a car. Justin said the Spanish word for car. Instead of reprimanding him for not saying the English word, she helped to connect the two words, to get him into the habit of speaking English. If she had made him feel embarrassed for speaking his native language, he would get into a habit of not speaking it for negative reasons.

John Dewey argues that language should be viewed as an asset, not a deficit. Students languages should be embraced, not shoved to the back. After all, in a diverse and growing world, bilingualism is one of the most valuable skills one can have. Mrs. Smith clearly demonstrated this by the way she encouraged Justin to learn the English word, while allowing him to feel a sense of pride for being able to connect it to the word of his native language.

Prompt #1: My School

When I first learned of my placement for the Service Learning Project, I was a little concerned about the area I would be volunteering in. On the morning we were two start, I picked up some fellow volunteers and we made our way to XYZ Elementary. All I could think of was how different the surroundings were from what I was used to. The entrance seemed to be closed and I didn’t know exactly where to go from there, fortunately, we were able to find our way. The school looked very nice on the outside.
We went inside and asked to find our coordinator and it looked nice inside too. White walls, but many different colors on doors and stairs. We went upstairs to our coordinator, Mrs. Bryant, and she assigned us to classrooms and we went in to observe. Our first stop was in kindergarten. The kindergarten classroom was very nice. It was a large room, with a white board in the front, filled with learning materials; calendar, number line, letters, animal names, etc. The class had about 20 students. There was one teacher, Mrs. Smith, along with one teacher assistant. This was an ESL classroom and the students were of many different ethnicities. A kindergarten classroom needs to be controlled. The teacher has a nice way to get the children to do what they are supposed to. Every time they are going to get a new direction, they must sit on the rug. Mrs. Smith will sing a version of the ABC’s song and when the children hear this, they will sit quietly on the rug, ready for the next instruction. This was a refreshing tactic to control the students in a fun way. It is also something that I can learn from as an aspiring teacher.
Our next stop was our first grade classroom. The students in this classroom were friendlier than in kindergarten where I felt the students were afraid to be around us. The students always like to include us in what they are doing and try to make us feel welcome. I feel like this is the main value in this classroom, to make people feel welcome. This classroom is very similar to the kindergarten room, except the white board, instead of being filled with learning materials, there was a lot more open space, which the teacher uses to write. This classroom also has about 20 students, also of all different ethnicities, so I can’t help to think that because this is a regular education, not an ESL , classroom, the students were quicker to recognize as non-threatening, which is why they were able to recognize and include us. It will be interesting to see if these values hold true through the remainder of my time at XYZ Elementary.