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.