Final Day

After volunteering at Greenville Elementary for a few months now I do not want to leave. I am so glad I was able to work with these students and teacher Ms. Oak. Ms. Oak is an excellent example of promoting an empowering classroom. Ira Shor would agree with me that she encourages her students and challenges them. One time in the classroom she was doing a review of adding double digit numbers with single digit numbers and since all of the students seemed excited and knew how to accomplish the worksheets she gave out she encouraged them to finish the rest on their own, and then after they had finished they would correct the work together. She gives her students confidence by giving them compliments when they are doing the right thing. If some students are not paying attention and others are she will say comments like “Mary is paying attention extremely well today”. This grabs the attention of the rest of the seven year olds and they all want to be complimented like Mary, so they pay attention. I am glad I got the opportunity to work with Ms. Oak. My first day I had a different teacher, and was very apprehensive about the experience because she was a tyrant to her students rather than a teacher.

This experience is shaping my teacher identity through both observing Ms. Oak and through my personal struggles and triumphs. At times it is difficult to get students to pay attention. I am realizing I need to be more forceful so that the students know I am an authority because one day two boys were acting up and they just would not listen to me, but when Ms. Oak gave them attention they settled down. The other struggle that I have with the students is that they want to just ask me questions or play with my hair rather than do their work. It is hard to ignore their work and play games with them and let them hug me and play with my hair, but I am their educator not their babysitter.

Every student has their own way of learning. When I am a teacher I am going to figure out how each particular student in my classroom learns and do my best to accommodate them. In the classroom I volunteer in, one boy does not focus on his work. He would rather look around, draw, or do anything besides work, but when someone needs help, he is the first one to help out. He understands the work, he just does not want to do it, but if someone needs helps with it he will help them, so I tell him to finish his work first for me to look at and then he can help other people. He gets excited to be able to help other students and will do his work. It is good to have him in the classroom because many students are constantly asking for help, so since he understands the material and is willing to help other students is encouraging.

I am excited to further my teaching career. Even when there are struggles, it is worth it. I cannot wait to have my own classroom of students to prepare fun lessons for. Ms. Oak prepared a lesson on wind. She made a contraption out of sticks and cups and used a fan to show how wind moves and works. The students had to count how many times the contraption twirled around in a minute. They jumped out of their seats and were so excited and shouted as they counted. It was so fun to watch them get so excited and cannot wait to have that experience in my own classroom.

Involving Parents

When I came to Greenville Elementary School this past week Ms. Oak was correcting the math assignment the students completed the day before. One boy, Claude had his homework on his desk, but he was not correcting it with the rest of the class. Many other students were exciting about correcting their work, putting checks next to the questions they got right, but Claude sat there staring off into space. Ms. Oak noticed him dazing off into his own dreamland, and asked him why he wasn’t correcting his homework. She looked at his answers and saw that they were incorrect. She exclaimed “Claude, do you understand this assignment?” He solemnly said no I do not. She said “then why are you not paying attention as we go over it and correcting it with the rest of the class? I had parent-teacher conferences last night and your father is concerned that I am not getting through to you!” I personally think she should have said this in private, but I can understand that she was very frustrated. It made me aware that she communicates with the parents of her students. Ms. Oak also told her students that several parents at the conferences expressed concern that their children were not receiving any spelling homework. They said their children always had spelling homework and it helped them read. Ms. Oak told her students that from now on they would receive spelling homework.
As a teacher I will be responsible for being involved with the parents of my students. I will hold parent-teacher conferences twice a year in between each semester. To make myself available for parents to contact me I will give them my phone number and email addresses as well as have their numbers and email addresses in case I need to contact them in any case necessary. It is important to have parent involvement because when the students are not in school they are at home. The students’ parents know what kind of work their child did in previous years. It also creates a stronger connection with the students.

Ms. Oak's empowering education classroom

We all learn differently. Some people are oral learners, others are visual learners, and some are kinesthetic learners where they learn better doing hands on activities. I personally learn better when doing something hands on, or when I physically am looking at the material. When I have my own classroom I am aware that I will have students who will have all different ways of learning. It is important to be able to use a variety of assignments to accommodate the various learning techniques.

In Ms. Oak’s first grade class it is hard enough getting the children focused on the assignment given, let alone make sure each student properly understands what the assignment is asking them to do. Ms. Oak does a great job at getting the attention of her students. She waits until all of the students have their hands in an “o” position and sitting quietly to assure that each student is given the opportunity to hear and understand all of the directions. Once each student has heard all the directions she splits the class into the two reading groups she previously assigned. One group sits around a round table to do reading activities with her, and she leaves me with the other students to make sure they complete a few assignments, usually consisting of two pages in their workbook, a practice paper, and if they finish to read the next story. Ms. Oak does a great job at getting her students to initiate their work; I however have a harder time. Most of the time the students are focused on sharpening their pencils until they are one inch long, stabbing holes in their reading boxes, drawing pictures on their boxes, or asking me questions about my life such as why I am there, why I go to college, if they could play with my hair, or simply being fascinated by the fact that I am 19 years old. It is a blast for me to have them so interested in my life, but I have to make sure they get their work done. Ms. Oak does a good job at appealing to all of the different styles of learning. When she is with one group she reads to the students, as well as they read aloud to her and the fellow students in the group. Then the students usually play a listening and reading game with her. When that group of students works alone they do the worksheets. I noticed that one particular girl named Tulip has an extremely hard time settling down and paying attention. When she works on the activities alone I noticed she cannot get motivated. I usually sit next to her making sure she gets her work done. It is hard balancing myself with helping their other students if they have any questions as well as making sure Tulip is working on her assignments as well. I noticed that Tulip likes to help me help the other students, so when they come up asking me a question, and she has already finished that part of the assignment I will ask her to explain it to them. She gets really excited to help the other students.

Ms. Oak’s classroom is an example of empowering education pedagogy, expressed by Ira Shor. Ms. Oak makes sure she is responding to all the needs of each student to create growth for each individual student. Ms. Oak sets high expectations for her students to learn the material given. She does this by appealing to each student’s individual learning style. Ira Shor would be pleased by Ms. Oak’s teaching methods to create an empowered classroom. I am glad to be in a classroom with a teacher who can elicit positive emotions to the class at times where she is clearly frustrated over distracted first graders.

Diversity at Greenville prompt 2

The students at Greenville* Elementary are mostly African American, or Hispanic. When looking around the classroom there are only a couple Caucasian and Asian students. When searching Greenville Elementary on inforworks.com, the statistics show that 56%, more than half of the school’s students are Hispanic. 21% are African American, only 13% Asian and 10% Caucasian.
When you first walk into the school there are signs in both Spanish and English, which I think it is great to have a school welcoming to people who speak different languages. I think these signs are mostly for parents leading them to different part of the building, because inside the actual classrooms there are no other signs containing both languages. According to infoworks.com only 26% of the students are receiving an ESL education service.
Jonathan Kozol would say that this school is not a diverse school. Just because most of the students in the school are Hispanic or African American, does not make this school diverse. When looking at the students in Ms. Oak’s classroom there are only two Caucasian students and one Asian student. Jonathan Kozol would argue that if this school was diverse, then there would be an equal percentage of all ethnicities.
According to infoworks.com the majority of the percentage of proficiency in math and reading for grades 3 through 6 are substantially below proficient. The students in which attend Greenville Elementary live in a poor urban area. This could be a factor in why scores are so low. Jonathan Kozol argues that if this happened to a rich school, something would be done to change the proficiency of the scores. He says what is good for a rich child, is just as good for a poor child. It is upsetting to me that year after year the students at the school are continuing to achieve such low scores.
In Ms. Oak’s classroom, the ethnical background differences of the students are as obvious to these first graders as it is to me. A boy, Bert was being teased by another boy, Ernie, saying he had a crush on a girl in the class. Bert was not angry he laughed with Ernie saying he could never have a crush on the girl because they were friends, and neighbors, but more importantly because she was white. Bert did not speak about the girl’s skin color in a derogatory way, but it was one of the reasons that he could not have a crush on her. Since these boys were saying this directly in front of me, I explained that it was okay if he had a crush on her and Bert exclaimed “That means I can have a crush on you!”
*names have been changed

First Day

I was very anxious on my first day of student teaching. I was both excited and nervous because I did not know what to expect. When I arrived at the school I was not surprised at all by the neighborhood. The school is in an urban neighborhood not far from Rhode Island College. When I arrived I saw a few children coming in late, hurriedly trying to get to their classrooms. When I approached the door I tried to open it but it was locked. I stood there confused and tried to figure out how to open the door, when a little boy came running up to me and told me I had to press the white button on the side. He also showed me the camera at the top of the door. “They let you in” he said as he waved to the camera. Inside there were signs in both Spanish and English saying where the office was. I could tell right away that this school was very diverse. When I got to the first grade classroom I was assigned to for the day no one was there so I waited a couple minutes and the children and teacher came in. The children were filing in the classroom and putting away their backpacks and coats. One little girl was singing as she walked in, so I smiled at her, but her teacher quickly turned around yelling “who is making noise and disrupting the line?” I soon became very intimidated by this teacher because I did not think it was inappropriate for the little girl to be singing at that time. I did not think she was disrupting anyone. When everyone was in the classroom the teacher nicely greeted me as the children were asked to quietly sit in their assigned places on the rug. The teacher shouted at a little boy because he was not in his assigned place, and shouted for everyone to be silent. I understand you have to be firm with your students so that they listen and respect you, but these children seemed frightened by their teacher. I noticed that all of the student’s desks were placed in groups of four except one little boy’s desk was excluded in the back. There were many signs around the room with letters on them and days of the week, to remind and help the students. There was a round desk in the front of the classroom that was very messy and unorganized. I got the feeling that’s there was a lack of organization in the classroom when I arrived and the teacher could not find the game I was going to be playing with the students, so she had to quickly make a new set using note cards. The teacher continued to be harsh with her students, yelling at them if they had gotten an answer wrong. Maybe she was having an off day that day, but I do not think her way of teaching is very constructive to her students.

introduction

hello, My name is kristin. When I am not attending school I live in Guilford, Ct. While attending school I live on campus. I work at the library. So far my semester is going well. I have chosen some interesting classes this semester. When I have some free time I love to hang out outside with friends. I also love making my own jewelry. I have never made a blog before. Enjoy the 3 day weekend =)