Blogs

School: Elementary school (Pre-K – 5th grade) in West Philadelphia

Class: Kindergarten

Class size: 23 students

Teacher: Ms. Lowe

Aide: Ms. Monay

**Pseudonyms are used in these notes.

Placement

Field Notes #2

February 5, 2013

Last week at the end of my praxis visit, the main classroom teacher and I decided to implement a system of notes to guide my visits to her classroom. This is mainly because she has a meeting for 20 minutes when the students first arrive so there is another teacher in the classroom directing morning meeting. So, when I walked into the classroom today, there was a box labeled “Teacher Ellen” that had several sticky notes inside of it.

The first sticky gave me instructions for the beginning of the day: “please take down the New Years posters on the bulletin board at the back of the classroom and put up the new posters in the box.” The classroom has several bulletin boards, each of which consistently display student work. However, not all student work can be displayed on the board because this teacher teaches the entire 6th grade language arts/social studies classes. Sometimes, the work that is displayed on the boards is chosen randomly (as evidenced by the system I used last week to hang up posters in the hallways, basically put them up until there is no more space). However, sometimes, the student work chosen for display is based on the grade that the students received. Today, that is the case with the student work that I was asked to put up.  All of the work in the pile to hang up had a received a grade of A+, A, or A-.

In word.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - Field Placement Visit #1

As I approached the brown brick building of Excellence Charter School (ECS) at Learning Campus, groups of African-American students lingered around the front door and off to the side of the building talking to each other before school began. I entered the two glass doors and notified a white-male teacher at the front door to inform him that I was here for field placement with Jane Bard. (Jane Bard is a first year teacher). He directed me to the front desk to sign in. After I signed in, I went to Room 107 and saw my host teacher sitting in front of her laptop preparing for the day. Ms. Bard welcomed me and provided me a clipboard with three sheets of the assigned seating for the three math courses I would be observing.

When the first school bell rang, 10th graders began trickling into the classroom for their first class of the day -- geometry. Ms. Bard greeted her students saying "Good morning Tom" and "Good morning Anna" by calling out her students’ first names. She then asked her students how their internships were going. When they saw the new assigned seats, some of Ms. Bard's students called out, "We got new seats?!" Mrs. Bard tried to calm her class down by having her students focus on the Do-Now, which is a silent and independent task.  Since this was a new semester and a new year, Mrs. Bard had some questions she wanted to know from students. They were:

1. Which expectations will be most challenging for you?

Unstructured Dialogue: A Way to Access Funds of Knowledge

12:30 p.m. – I arrived earlier than I expected so I told Ms. D that next time I could start around 12:45 instead of 1 p.m. Today is my actual first day of “teaching/tutoring.” I put those in quotes because this experience will not exactly follow the kind of teaching that happens in a school classroom. However, Site A has classrooms that are used for all sorts of activities. A weekly schedule is posted on each classroom door to show which department can have the room for the allotted time.

The classroom is a decent size even though Ms. D said that there isn’t enough space in the organization. About 16 chairs surround the rectangle table, which occupies most of the classroom. A white board is located across the door. There is a world map and several handmade posters on the walls: classroom rules (e.g. Turn off cell phones), “What is your job?” (pictures with words), and classroom questions (e.g. How do you say ___ in English?). There are fluorescent lights on the ceiling. I mention this because lighting is one of my concerns in a classroom.

On Saturday night, I sent Alice an email that began like this, "Hello Prof. Alice,
           I decided to read the June Jordan article because it really interested me in class, but I still have a few burning questions, especially after our last class. How can one not betray themselves, and still achieve an ends within a society where who they are is contrary to the power structures in place. In other words, how can I work against the system within the system? Should I play along with them in order to achieve my ends? Or should I toss it all aside and be me, write like me, and talk like me?"

Last Thursday in class, we discussed the journal entry about a first grade student who had been given a minor role in her school play because English was her second language, and therefore she was not as fluent as the other students. The writer of this journal entry describee this experience as a turning point that motivated her to develop her reading and speaking skills in English. While reading and discussing this post, I began to wonder about that pivital moment in every young students' life when they decide that it is time to commit to learning their language and to read. As a college student, I understand both the functional purpose and the societal norm that states that around the age of five, children should start to learn to read. However, when you are five, you are still oblivious to these societal norms. This is where my question stems from. What is it that inspires a young student who barely understands the importance of reading, to want to read? I believe that in the case of this specific journal entry, it was the realization that an inability to read English would socially separate her from her peers. This caused me to reflect on the ways that social pressures are present even at this early age. I believe that without the pressure/support/and desire to fit in with your peers (an innate desire) students would not be as motivated to learn to read, or for that matter, develop any other skill.