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.