Blogs

3/6/13 

• How is the notion of some students as "bad apples" (from chapter 6 of Whatever It Takes) resonant -- or not -- in your field setting?  Who gets categorized in this way, and by whom? what are the "criteria" for this kind of label, or to put it another way, what are students labeled this way like? how they treated?
• If this "bad apples" idea is NOT relevant to your setting, consider why not -- and what that might suggest about what's happening there.

This question is very interesting to think about in regards to my field placement. At both the Elementary Schools I am placed at, I am in a small pull-out class with anywhere from 1 to 10 students. These students come from many different backgrounds and cultures, and they also speak different languages. Until receiving this prompt, I never thought about “Bad Apples.” In my classes, each of the students is pretty well behaved. To me, a bad apple is a student who acts out often. He or she is identifiable by the rest of the students and the teacher- all would agree that the student has behavioral problems. At my placement, however, this is not the case.

     Why doesn’t my placement have a bad apple, or even more than one bad apple? Small class size might have something to do with it. Often times, and in my experience, students act out to get attention. In a class that is small and sometimes has more than one teacher (when I’m there), each student gets more attention than they do in their normal classroom.

In thinking about my placement, I feel like I have a very idealistic environment where my teacher doesn’t label her students bad apples and doesn’t necessarily have the pressure of placing her students on specific tracks according to large classroom. Because she only has 8 students in her classroom, she is able to work with them on a more individual basis. Even with this, she sometimes has a hard time getting all of her students to be productive when she needs them to be.  Since it is special education, she also has the privilege of being able to evaluate each student individually, since concepts like the IEP require it.

If she were forced to label her students in some way,  I believe that she would not be able to. She genuinely believes that each of her students is capable of achieving what is put in front of them though their progress is not as accelerated as students in a regular classroom, when progress is made, students are often proud of themselves.  For example, one student, who’s verbal skills are not up to par is always constantly perfecting the way he announces his words. If he does not get it in the first few tries, he will keep trying until he gets it and my teacher will wait, listen and assist until he gets it down.

After having had read Lives of the Boundary Mike Rose and Noa’s Arkby David Schwarzer, I began entering the class feeling enthusiastic and of course full of ideas to experiment with my tutee. My goal from this visit was to further extend Mike Rose’s statement regarding human connection. I wanted to gain trust but equally gain respect from my tutee. I started the session by asking if he had any homework. He responded “yes” accompanied by an unwilling spirit. We started the homework with math problems regarding symbols such as < (less than), > (greater than) and = (equal). It occcured to me that it takes a lot of creativity to form something interesting that can gain my tutee’s interest.   In terms of English, we did a few words that required us to fill in the blanks. One of the vocabulary for today was the word “shade”. At first we tried to illustrate the word through drawing tall trees shading people below them. Later, I tried to illustrate this word through some acting techniques. I was trying my best to create a third space between us while reminding myself not to be oppressive but still gain respect. . It was certainly a tiring day but I learned so much more about my tutee and I was so proud of him when it came to reading time. Last session, my tutee was barely interested to get by two books. Today my tutee told me that he wanted to make his parents proud and he read me 5 books.

Before class, Ms. Presley said “we have a special friend in this class.” Michael's home-life is terrible (she didn't get more detailed then that) and he is new this year. He is the only one in the school not allowed to leave the classroom to use the bathroom, and he has been known to leave and not come back. (I wonder when he uses the bathroom.) He will say he is sick, but he isn't really sick. At the beginning of the year, the faculty tried being really nice to him, but didn't make any progress in his behavior. Now they are trying being really tough on him, and Ms. Presley wanted to give me a heads-up that I might see “tough love.”

During a lot of the class, Michael is being silly but the other students call him out on it, telling him to stop doing something every couple minutes. At one point, a student says to another “stop being the teacher” which is good advice, but Michael does in fact seem to be on a different, lower, level of power than the rest of the class somehow. Eventually he crawls over to the corner of the room. Ms. Presley directs him to come back to the circle with everyone else. He says something like “I'm trying to live an isolated existence from society” using similarly philosophical words. He comes back to the circle for a minute and repeats his dedication to isolation from society to another student.

“That's nice,” the other student says. He crawls away again and is called back.

• An Excerpt from Today's Field Notes: 
• This week I visited Hannah D.’s school, which is for children with autism. We have talked about the unique aspects of her school before, but I was struck by the reality of what she has said. There is an aide for nearly every student that I saw there, and the aides are near them at all times, physically modifying their behavior (pulling their hands away from something they should not be doing), encouraging them to participate in activities, and being there if the student needs help.
  • All of the children there are what people would say “low on the spectrum,” meaning they are low functioning and would be less successful in a typical classroom. I could observe this from their behavior, and could compare it to students I’ve worked with in the past who are “higher on the spectrum”.
• The first place we went to was the reading specialist, Karen (the teachers call one another by first names, the students are mostly nonverbal so do not frequently address the teachers). She was working with one student, John. John was singing to himself as they worked together. The two of them were sitting very close to one another in front of a computer, their legs touching. At times, John would play with Karen’s hands or touch her to get her attention, and Karen allowed this without comment. She was asking him to spell words, starting with “go”. She gave him plenty of time, and often he would sit there for a few seconds and not respond.

This week at my field placement I was able to observe a metacognition class.  When I walked in the students were seated at their desks working independently on what seemed like different steps of the same process.  Some were reading through packets of paper, others writing by hand, and still others on their computer.  At the beginning of the year the students learned about different learning styles and figured out which type of learning style they have.  They learned about how their brain works and why one method may work better for them.  As the year progressed they learned about different study skills and techniques and practiced developing these skills in the classroom. 

I was amazed that this school is implementing this type of learning at a sixth grade level.  I think it is an extremely important skill to possess and I am happy that these students are able to have the resources to develop their study techniques.  However, I would argue that the meta-learning process needs to be taken one step further.  I think it is important for students to apply the same methods to talking about the curriculum and where they are in their learning process within their core subject areas.  I hope that I have the opportunity to talk with some of the students in the class to see what they think about this process and their learning.

Nicole Johnson

Field Notes, 2/6/13

Morris Heights Elementary School, 2nd Grade, Ms. B

Social Studies

-       Do: “We will read about places and we will compare and contrast them”

-       Compare and contrast à compare, bring hands in together; contrast, spread them apart

-       Ven diagram

-       Social Studies book p. 90

-       Region

-       Teacher reads, students follow with fingers. Cardinal directions. “Never Eat Soggy Waffles”

-       Where is the equator on the earth? It’s a line that keeps South and North.

-       They cut?! “It’s not really cut but it looks like it splits the globe in half”

-       Venn diagram with Tropical Rain Forest and Mountain Region

-       T is sent to sit at another table because he was hitting his book. He is not allowed to talk or contribute. “Close your book, you’re done”

-       Cold calling

-       “I will not answer If you’re calling out”

• I arrived at 9:00am (earlier than usual) because my lead teacher was running the open house leaving only the aide in the classroom.  I came early to help the aide manage the classroom.
• In the past I have discussed the certain children who regularly display behavioral issues, and who have been labeled “bad apples.”  For them the classroom environment has become somewhat of a biased environment in response to all of their actions. 
  • For example, this morning when I arrived the children were just arriving and the teacher was not in the room because she was meeting with parents during an open house at the school.  The only adults in the room were myself, and the class aide.  Two students who have had behavioral issues in the past repeatedly kept getting reprimanded by the aide, even though they were not being disruptive to any measureable amount.  One student was sent to time out in another room, while another was sent to the counselor for help on the assignment. 
    • I found this to be very interesting.  I felt that I could have handled the two student’s behavior in the class. I felt that their behavior was manageable.

Field Notes 03/05/13

Morning meeting started a little different than usual in class today. I was sitting at the back of the class sorting through student’s reading tests and putting them in piles for each student while teacher B started morning meeting. Usually, Teacher B starts morning meeting by having the students go in a circle and greet each other. Today, however, Teacher B starts by saying “you know, im a little disappointed with you guys right now” and began talking to the students about how they had laughed at a student. Teacher B spoke to the students about had come to her even before the event occurred and had indicated that they were a little insecure that day. Teacher B indicated that while this student may have laughed along with them, it didn’t mean that they weren’t hurting on the inside. At this point, it was unclear to me which student she was specifically talking about since I was facing away from the circle. During class I noticed that one of the students seemed less animated than usual. They were frowning and staring at the desk for the first two periods and were avoiding talking to their peers. It wasn’t until a conversation with Teacher A later that I realized that the student that felt insecure and the student I noticed looked upset were the same person.

I'm confused about how discipline/management of student energy should be happening at my placement. A few weeks ago, Mariah, the programming director, briefly told us that Wordsmiths uses a point system. Today, she handed out printouts to each of the kids when they came in - Erica got 75% positive points yesterday, so the circle showed up 75% green. Another student only had 42% positive points. 

However, to my knowledge, none of the tutors have learned about this system or how to implement it. I didn't even know some of the rules until today (kids aren't allowed to go upstairs without an adult, students have to ask for permission to go outside, we don't use the "shut up" phrase, we don't use cuss words, no food from outside of Wordsmiths - especially candy). 

So I was outside with some of the kids for recess and I saw Bianca was talking with a friend. A few minutes later, I noticed that she was chewing something. Typically, the students are not supposed to have snacks of any kind until after recess when they go back inside (Wordsmiths provides fruit and yogurt). I asked her what she was eating. She said, "Nothing!" and backed away from me. She put one hand behind her back. Erica told her she better finish it quick.