Journal 2, Domain 2 and 5: Teaching and Students/Teaching and the Profession

What is the student body diversity and how is cultural diversity recognized in the school?

Many cultures are represented in Mrs. Davis’s classroom such as Latin American, East Asian, Ukrainian, Polish, and African American. There is no one culture that dominates Mrs. Davis’s classroom, but a definite minority in the school as a whole is Latin American. Mrs. Davis and one other teacher teach fifth grade. The other teacher leads a bilingual classroom down the hall. Every morning, the announcements come over the intercom. The daily announcements are shared and the class stands to say the Pledge of Allegiance. After the pledge, the word of the day is announced first in English and then in Spanish. In addition to be said over the announcements, the word of the day is posted in certain locations around the school in English as well as Spanish. The word of the day is one aspect of the school that acknowledges the cultural diversity of the school.

How are the children involved in the classroom; how do they relate to one another?

The students are active participants in the lesson all throughout the day. Mrs. Davis runs the classroom in a child-oriented manner. There is rarely a time when she lectures the classroom. The only time she lectures, is when she is giving instructions or is previewing the day ahead. Students are always involved in brainstorming, questioning, discussing, explaining, or demonstrating. Just last week, the students started a new unit on the American Revolutionary War. The first activity they did for that unit was make a KWL chart. All of the students were eager to contribute what they already knew about the American Revolution. By the end, all of their contributions and brainstorming of questions filled an entire piece of chart paper. Students are also actively involved in discussing ideas with their group members as well as explaining their thought process. During Daily Oral Language (DOL), students are given a sentence on the overhead and they are asked to make corrections. Once everyone has made their corrections, Mrs. Davis calls up a student to fix the sentence and then explains to her and the class the change they made and the reason behind the change. Another instance in which the students must outline their thought process is during their math add page. There always is a section where they have to do a story problem. They have to explain how they first thought about the problem, what information they used, how they used that information, and why they think their solution is correct. The add page gets students involved in working out their thought processes involved when they approach a complex math problem.
After the first day I observed, I could tell who the friends were in the classroom. The classroom is mostly girls with the exception of about five boys. There are two girls that sit next to one another who really enjoy talking, but they are always respectful when Mrs. Davis is talking. The boys tend to stick together even though they are spread out in the room. All of the students are respectful of one another, there have not been any conflicts from what I have seen except for a conflict of who would help an injured student get her crutches; both girls were very eager to help. I have also noticed how some students rely one another for help or an opinion when they are working amongst their groups. Just the other day, one student had the hardest time deciding how to start her illustrations for her story, but after asking various opinions she settled on drawing a pink house.

How are the needs of students with exceptionalities met in the classroom and at the school?

I only know of one child in Mrs. Davis’s class that has an exceptionality. He has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). He is fully included in Mrs. Davis’s classroom, because he is not taken out of the class during any part of the day. I have not noticed Mrs. Davis make any obvious accommodations for him during class. He is very intelligent and always does his work in class, but rarely does his homework for the following day. I have graded a few of his math papers, and he always makes an attempt to complete them. Mrs. Davis acknowledges to him that she is glad that he attempted to do the worksheet. During one of the days I was observing, the students were doing a state reading test. They were being tested on how many words they could correctly read aloud in one minute. There were about five students reading aloud in one room and it was quite loud. When it came to be his turn, he had trouble concentrating with all of the noise. The teacher conducting the test was aware of his exceptionality so she took him into another room that was quiet so they could get an accurate test. I feel that with that situation, it was a reasonable and necessary accommodation.
The school has only about 300 hundred students enrolled, so it is a fairly small school. I have not had the chance to really explore the entire building, but Mrs. Davis informed me that there is one class that is entirely exceptional students. Their classroom is located on the first floor because the school unfortunately does not have elevators.

How do teachers and other school personnel work together?

Mrs. Davis is very involved with all of the other teachers as far as sharing lessons and giving input if they are new teachers since she has been teaching for 25 years. Mrs. Davis works the closest with the other fifth grade teacher. Each subscribe to fifth grade resource magazines and then for lessons they pool their resources together.
Every teacher/staff member in the school has a keychain that has kindness/helpful cards attached to them. When a student helps them do something or they see an act of kindness from one student to another, they tear a card off their keychain and give it to the student. Then when the student returns to their classroom, they put their card in the class jar. At the end of the year, the classroom that has the most kindness cards will get to have lunch with the principal. During lunch, Mrs. Davis spilled her water on the floor and one boy in her class quickly went to go and get paper towel to clean it up. Mrs. Davis thanked him for getting the paper towel and rewarded him with a kindness/helpful card. Any teacher/staff member can hand out the card to any student, not just the ones in their classroom. This is a school wide tradition that facilitates school community.

How are families and other community members involved in the school?

I have only observed at the school three times and I have yet to really see how family and community members get involved in the school community. Mrs. Davis has just started to hand out parent-teacher conference slips to the students to give to their parents so they can sign up for any time slot that will fit their schedule. I think that Mrs. Davis is being respectful of the parent’s schedules by allowing them to sign up for a time slot rather than have one assigned to them.
The parents are also responsible for signing their child’s assignment notebook every day. The signature shows Mrs. Davis that the parents are aware of what their child has for homework that day.
I have not seen any community members come into the school to volunteer, but I have seen many pictures in the classroom from the fifth grade class trip to White Pines. These pictures represent how the classroom has interacted with their community. The students were very excited to show me the White Pines pictures in the classroom, the first time I observed. I could tell that they had a great time there. Often during class discussion, the students reference something they learned at White Pines. This reference demonstrates how the students use knowledge they learn at home or within their community in the classroom.

How does the teacher keep track of student progress?

Mrs. Davis keeps track of all of her student grades in her paper grade book. She meets with each student individually during reading and writing to monitor their progress. During independent reading, she calls about five students up individually and has them read a page or two in the current novel they are reading. Mrs. Davis then jots notes down about their fluency, word pronunciation, and awareness of punctuation on a sheet up paper that is kept in the reading folder Mrs. Davis keeps on each student. After they have read together, she asks then to set a goal for the day they want to finish their novel. I got the opportunity to read with one student and jot down what I thought she did well and also made suggestions on how they should use inflexions in their voice according to what type of sentence it was they were reading. Mrs. Davis values the importance of meeting with each student individually and feels that reading is a great time to do so.

What extra duty tasks does the teacher perform?

Mrs. Davis is the teacher leader for the school’s student council. During the students lunch/recess period on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she runs the student council down at the school store. Generally, student council members sell standard school supplies like folders, pencils, notebooks, and calculators at the store. When a holiday comes around, Mrs. Davis organizes a school fundraiser to either celebrate a holiday or support the school in some way. Currently, they are selling heart-o-grams for Valentine’s Day. Mrs. Davis monitored the students while they cut out paper hearts for the sale. She also bought valentine’s pencils that students could attach to their heart-o-gram not to their special someone or friend. All of the proceeds from the Valentine’s Day heart sale will be sent to help the relief efforts in Haiti.

In a paragraph, reflect in an analytical manner, what you learned about Teaching and the Students and Teaching and the Profession. You must integrate at least two ideas from the class discussion or text.

Every student has a unique contribution to make to their classroom and their community. I have learned that teachers have to allow students to express themselves as individuals while guiding them into engaging in social relationships that respect and build their school and classroom communities. I have also learned that school/community building is an ongoing process that should not stop after the end of the first day bell rings. According to Maniates, author of Teach Our Children Well, “Teachers can use opening-week assignments that showcase students as individuals and cultivate their respect for one another through read-aloud, shared reading, literature and writing topics, interviews and math surveys, science that uses the local environment, and cultural geography lessons where students’ families came from…traditions continue the process of building mutual respect” (2001, pg. 43). Through combining my knowledge learned after reading this chapter with the wall décor in Mrs. Davis’s classroom, I can determine which activities she most likely did in the opening week of school. One activity would be a class made graph on a poster displaying the favorite beverages of the classroom like Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Sprite. This activity familiarized each student with what others enjoy as well. Mrs. Davis’s “warm fuzzy” activity is a perfect example of how teachers can continue building upon the classroom community. Each week a new warm fuzzy is chosen and all of the his/her fellow students get to learn about what makes that student who they are as well as provide an opportunity for each student to write a reflection after their learn about their warm fuzzy for the week. I have also learned that building a whole school community is just as important as building a classroom community. South school does an excellent job of fostering school community through their distribution of kindness cards; this community building strategy is extremely similar to the flower activity utilized by the principal at West Portal School (2001, pg.44). I have also come to learn how important it is for every student’s voice to be heard in the classroom. When a student feels that they can openly share their thoughts, the learning atmosphere of the classroom will be productive. Mrs. Davis recognizes the importance of student participation. She engages the students in a lot of group discussions with their table group prior to whole class discussion. Her class has a few quiet students, so small group discussion is when they feel they can express their thoughts in a non-threatening situation. The teaching profession is one that always has a plate full of responsibility. Teachers have a responsibility to their students, colleagues, student parents, and themselves. Teachers also have to realize that their attitudes influence the attitudes of their students. If the teacher is not motivated to teach, the student will not be motivated to learn.

Citation
Maniates, H. , & Doerr B. (2001). Teach Our Children Well: Essential Strategies for the Urban Classroom. Portsmouth: Heineman, pg. 43-44