My Teaching Adventure!

By going to these Providence Schools every week really has made a huge difference in my teaching experience. Every job I've had since I was 15 had to do with children, but never actually going into a classroom. My mother is a Pre-School teacher and I've gone to work with her and seen her teach her children but by actually working with them hands on has really gotten me ready for my own classroom one day. Every week when i go into the elementary school i sit in the back of the classroom and observe the daily lessons and activities my teacher does with the children. I watch how my teacher handles the children's needs and problems and how she responds to their questions and answers. After observing for a little while the children always get off of the alphabet rug and sit at their desks ready to draw and practice their letters. They learn a new letter every week and have to draw a picture of the letter and practice writing the letter in their journals. I walk around and help the students with their letters and give them a stamp or a star on their paper if they've done a good job listening and following directions. By sitting in the classroom every week i already have learned all of the children's names and what they need help with and what they are capable of. When becoming a teacher, you first need to learn all about each child's history and their learning skills before starting to teach them. You cant have a classroom filled with children not knowing their learning capability. A teachers role is to never have the children be afraid of you, you always want them to tell you whatever their feeling and talk with you almost like a counselor. Its better to be close with your teacher so they can help you instead of having problems with your teacher because that wont get you anywhere. Looking back, i can still remember my favorite teachers and the impact that each teacher has had on my life. I can still remember the teacher i was afraid of and were mean to me. As a teacher you never want to have that image of yourself on children. By going every week to these Providence schools also has helped me work and teach ESL children. When i become a teacher i could have many ESL children in my classroom and from attending this Elementary school i have a lot more experience working with them than before i started my service learning. By going to these schools every week i also have gained patience with the children. For example, some of the children wont sit still when i am tutoring them one on one. They are antsy and sometimes I feel like they don't want to listen, so by going every week i have learned to be more patient with the children and by asking them nicely to pay attention instead of getting fed up and angry will really get the children to listen to me and respect me as a teacher. By doing service learning hours it has really gotten me ready to be in my own classroom someday. Just by going in the classroom and watching all the different activities and ways to teach the children has made me feel more comfortable and ready to have my own classroom someday!

Snow White Castle

When walking into the classrooms of Snow White Castle Elementary School, you will see many different types of race and languages within the students. In my Kindergarten classroom all of the children are Hispanic besides about 1 or 2. They all can speak fluent Spanish and broken up English. When I tutor some of the children outside of the classroom they all have very strong accents. When i ask them a question, most of them answer in broken up English and then ask me if their correct. As Kindergarten students they all know that English is their second language and how i speak in English sounds different than how they pronounce their words. I love sitting in the classroom and listening to them speak. Each one of the Kindergarten children all really want to learn. They all get excited when us, tutors takes them out of the classroom because they love the one on one attention. I don't live with the children at home, so i don't know how much attention they get from their parents but by going once a week really makes a difference in the students life's. When i walk into the first grade classrooms most of the children are black and Hispanic and English is their second language. When i tutor the first graders i ask them to read a book to me. I have 1 Hispanic boy, 1 Hispanic girl and 1 white girl. When we read books the Hispanic little boy and girl pronounce their words differently than the little white girl and she always tries to correct them. I thought that was very interesting, having ESL children mixed with a child who just needs help reading because she knows that they have accents and always tries to correct their English. The ESL children get annoyed sometimes so I have to explain to her that we are working on reading and not how they talk. Sometimes its a struggle for me because having them mixed is harder than just having all children that need help reading but every time i go to Snow White Castle they are improving and the little girl doesn't correct them as much anymore. When looking at Info Works their are many different pie charts about Snow White Castle Elementary School. The first pie chart is about reduced and free lunches. There is 91% of children that get free or reduced lunch at school and 9 aren't eligible. That shows that their families aren't making enough money to give their children money to buy lunch and they qualify for free lunches at school. Also on the next pie chart there is race and ethnic backgrounds at the school. The chart reads that 62% are Hispanic and 12% are African American, Asians are 17% and whites are 8%. By looking at these results it doesn't surprise me at all. Almost every child in both of my classrooms I observe are all Hispanic or African Americans. Just by the first day I walked in the school and saw many Spanish posters, I knew right away the Hispanic percentage would be higher than whites. I was then surprised when i saw on the last pie chart, students receiving ESL/ Bilingual education services and the percentage of children that don't receive ESL at all are 74%. The students that receive ESL is 26%. That surprised me a lot because most of my children are ESL. I thought the percentages would be opposite but by looking at that chart maybe the children haven't been put into ESL classrooms yet. The students at Snow White Castle Elementary School bring cultural capital into the classroom. Most of the students in my classrooms receive free or reduced lunch. The children's families can not afford money to give to their children to buy lunch everyday. The children tell me what their parents do for a living. They tell me that some of their parents are stay at home moms or are teachers or some just don't even know. But even if there parents make little to no money they are still highly educated. Even if their families don't have much money the children in my classroom are still getting educated they are receiving social skills and intellectual knowledge. Just by being in school you learn all of those skills that would help you in the real world someday. My theorist i related this prompt to was Kahnn and Westheimer. By reading In the Service Of What? reminded me about our service learning we are doing in the providence schools. By going to Snow White Castle i am making a huge difference on the children's lives even if they don't realize it right now. Just by sitting with them one on one and helping them read i am making a difference on their lives that they never would have had. Kahnn and Westheimer talk about all the different service learning projects they did and this really reminds me of our experiences. By going to these school every week has really made a difference in my life as well. It will help me out one day when i am faced with all of these challenges in my own classroom and by doing this service learning we will be ready to face all of these challenges!

Becoming A Better Teacher

If i was a teacher in a classroom that worked with families and community resources about the differences in families and the importance of family participation in the students learning, I would be facing many challenges along the way.
The first challenge I would face would be most of the parents in my community don't understand or speak much English. Which would be hard to communicate with them when talking about their child. I would have to try my best to talk about the child and hopefully they can understand a little of the English. I can also write it on a piece of paper because some native speakers can read and write English but just cant understand what I'm saying. For example, in my classroom the teacher was talking to the parent and was writing down on paper most of what she was saying and she could understand that much better than when you speak it to her. If the parents don't understand any English at all I would have to have a bilingual teacher with me to repeat back what I am saying.
Another problem i might face is the parent doesn't help their child at home with their school work or just works two jobs and doesn't have time to help their child. Also if a parent is divorced or split up it would be hard to communicate with just one and not the other. Unless the other parent doesn't care about their child's school work, but mostly both parents are very interested in what their child is learning especially at a younger age like elementary school. If the parents don't help their child with their school work it can cause a huge problem because us as teachers can only do so much in the classroom and when they get home from school that's beyond our control. If a parent doesn't sit one on one with their child especially if English is their second language and help them with their homework every night then they wont be improving their learning to move on to the next grade.
Also another problem that could be caused is if the parent isn't involved with the school and doesn't take time to go and talk to the teacher to see what the child needs help on or what they have improved with. That could cause a huge problem because then they wont know whats going on in their child's educational life. Also the parents should talk to the principal and secretaries and see all the events and different activities going on around the school so they can get involved and always know whats going on when their child isn't at home and is at school. Its very important to always check in with the school because when your child starts getting older they could have the tendency to skip school and if the parent isn't involved in the school they would never know weather their child is in school or not. Especially if the child is ESL, they could get aggravated easily and not want to go to school because the learning might be to hard for them.
Another point I would like to make is the parents need to understand that every family is different and the importance in all the different families. Some families have grown up in America and learning how to read and write comes easily to them. But others that grew up in another country need more one on one because reading and writing is their second language. This reminds me of Claude Goldenberg. When we read "Teaching English Language Learners" it reminded me of the prompt. In this article they talk all about ESL children and that's what I was writing about. This article was very interesting and talked all about how hard it is to be an ESL student compared to English being your first language. It talks all about how to deal with the ESL children and the percentages of how many were born in the U.S.A. That became very shocking to me because 76 percent were born in the U.S.A which i thought it would be a lot less. This article was also very helpful because it teaches you that you need to teach your ESL children to read from their first language first and it will help the child improve in their reading and writing. In classrooms these days, you will be placed with many ESL children especially if you work in Providence schools so us as teachers need to be prepared with learning how to teach them.
All in all, I liked this prompt very much and I thought it helped me become a better teacher by putting myself in the position that I could end up in so i am fully prepared when it becomes my turn. I also liked the article very much, it improved my knowledge about ESL students because when I become a teacher someday I will be faced with many challenges and I need to be prepared!

Another Day At The Elementary School

To start off my blog I want to say that I am very sad I only have 3 more visits to attend. This experience has been a lot of fun and very interesting. I have gotten to know the children so well over the past 6 times Ive went, and it will be sad to leave them. When i go into the classrooms they all get excited when i walk in and especially the children who I'm working with one on one. As soon as i take the children out in the hallway to practicing rhyming or making sentences I always ask them about themselves and I want to know more about them than just their name and what school they go too. This makes my experience a lot more interesting and fun if you get to know the children and they also feel more comfortable around you. In one of the prompts it talks about "no one enters a classroom without a personal history; thus no one enters a classroom completely bias." When i looked at this prompt I knew right away what i was going to say. As soon as i walked into that classroom, or any teacher that walks into the classroom always needs to know about their children they are going to be teaching. Even in college, we go around and talk about ourselves because no one wants to learn or sit in a classroom not knowing one thing about the teacher or any of the students. When i become a teacher and teach elementary school children there are going to be many challenges and advantages as I go along. In my classroom particularly at Snow White Castle Elementary School a lot of children there are shy and don't know how to express themselves. When asking a child to tell you a little about themselves most of them wont open up to you for a little while because they are just young and don't feel comfortable around you yet. But then you have some children who just want to talk to someone and will tell you everything about their lives. I wish i had enough time every week to go into the classroom and learn something about every child's life, but considering we only have 90 minutes I cant bond with the children as much as i want to. When i walked into the first grade classroom , the teacher was telling each child to be quiet and do their work while she was testing with other students. I sat down with one of the children and helped him with his spelling, while another girl across the desk was talking. I simply looked at her and told her to be quiet please because other students are working, and then she continued to give me a hand gesture and roll her eyes. Now she is only in first grade and she is already giving me "talk to the hand" gestures. I right then was a little upset and got the wrong impression of the little girl right when she did that. As a teacher, I would then talk to her one on one and ask her why she did that. That's not the right way to approach a teacher but since i am not the teacher she thought she could take advantage of me. This student was probably the nicest girl, but by doing that to me i wasn't sure what to make of her. As a teacher, there needs to be many adjustments made with some students but that's what teachers are here for. Also, by reading Lisa Delpit, The Silenced Dialogue reminded me a lot of this prompt. She talks all about different races and codes of power. This relates alot to my classroom and what I'm talking about because she talks about issues of power in classrooms. The power of teachers over students and all about the different experiences in the classroom. I also like in the article when she says "The teachers role is to maintain the full attention of the group by continuous questioning, eye contact, finger snaps, hand claps and other gestures." Which reminds me of my classroom at Snow White Castle Elementary School. When the children aren't listening the kindergarten teacher snaps her fingers and says "Okay class lets look up here now" and she really get there attention. If you are teaching middle school or high school it might not be a good idea to snap your fingers because the students wont listen to you. But as an elementary school teacher the children will listen when you snap your fingers because most of them want to learn. I only have 3 more times to attend which is sad, but by going to this elementary school it has helped me out a lot so one day we can all be the best teachers around.

My First Day Of School!

When i first pulled up to Calf Pen Meadow I didnt see any windows.It was right next to a liquore store so i didnt know if that would have been the school. It just looked like a brick building and i couldnt even find a door. Finally i parked and walked around the school to find a door. After my 3rd time being there i just walk in and go to the classroom I am assigned. The kindergarton classroom children are very welcoming and happy we are there. My teacher is also very happy that she has extra help. But my first grade teacher is a little different. She's groucy and yells at the children alot. The school's environment isnt as welcoming as i thought it would be. I couldnt find the office the first day we walked in there, it was right around the corner. Also theres big brick stairs and it doesnt look much like an inside of an elementary school. The kindergarton children are learning how to rhyme and sound out words. I observe the classroom and see if they need any help for a half hour. Then i take 3 children outside in an empty classroom and help them with there letters. After another half hour i move to the 1st grade classroom. They are learning how to put words into a sentence. I also took 3 children out of the room and gave them one on one help. I loved all of the children i was working with. They all wanted to learn and were very friendly children. So far, my experience has been great!