Mrs. Wirz's Fifth Grade Class:
I have now spent 2 weeks with Mrs. Wirz's Fifth Grade class and I am very happy that I am in her classroom. The kids are great, though occasionally rambunctious, and the class is very organized. I have found myself settling into my role, monitoring the class and working with kids one on one. Most of the time I walk the room during her lessons to make sure everyone is paying attention and doing as they should, then when they are working I go from one raised hand to the next to assist as needed. A lot of the kids need a whole lot of help. I have been stunned by the lack of reading skills and how far behind many students are for their grade level in both reading and math. Many of my students read picture books or very short chapter books. I have one student who I have been working with a lot during reading groups. She is in one of the lowest levels for the class. She is a new student to the school and has only been there a few weeks longer than I have. When I help her, I have her read aloud to me and I have noticed that a lot of the time she is guessing at what a word might be, judging by the first letter, instead of taking the time to sound it out. She stumbles over the simplest words and lacks the vocabulary necessary to understand what she is reading. When she reads out loud and rushes past words and reads others out of order, I think that a part of her has given. But I know that deep down she does believe in herself, at least slightly. Or perhaps a better description is that she wants to believe in herself. This same student came up to my on the playground one morning, really upset after her cousin has called her "mental." The other kids can see how far behind she is, but I am guessing that in her case it is a lack of proper education rather than inferior intellect that is holding her back. She went on and on to me about how she is not "mental" because if she was she would be in a special school. She has a point too. Not only is she at the school, but she does not even qualify for the resource room. Despite how far behind she is, she cannot get the extra help some students receive in special ed. Too many students fall into this category. It seems impossible to help them all and it is sad to see them struggle. But then there are the moments when they get something, just one small thing, and you see the pride radiate across their face. The other day this same girl walked me through the math problem she was working in. She had done the problem correctly and found two equivalent fractions. When I told her she was right, she could not have been happier. It is moments like that that make this first round project so gratifying.
Staff Development:
Our first week at FC Joyce was a short week for the students. Thursday was veterans day and the friday was a staff development day. As Americorps members we had Thursday off and then headed to school with all of the teachers on Friday. If we hadn't already felt we were part of the staff, we were now certainly on the other side of the education system from our days as students. The day was broken up into two sessions with lunch in the middle. In the morning there was one presenter who came. He was wonderful. His topic was "Reaching 'Hard to Reach' Students." He talked about behavior vs. Interpretation, how we can support or control, who are these hard to reach students (including some explanation or neurological matters involved), and the fight or flight reactions that we all experience and children cannot control. He shared many great example stories from his years working as a school psychologist and behavior analyst. Overall it was a very helpful, engaging, and worth while morning. The afternoon did not prove quite as fruitful. The presenter had been to the school before and had more workshops planned with the FC Joyce staff to work on Active Participation strategies to get students involved in class. Many of the strategies he talked about were good ideas and the teachers discussed what had been working so far, and maybe what didn't work as well. But the presenter was disorganized and not particularly captivating.
Still, many of his techniques are techniques that I have seen being used successfully in my classroom. The one I find the most effective of things I have not seen before is the use of personal student whiteboards. Each student in my class has their own small whiteboard and whiteboard pen that they keep in their desks. At certain points in class Mrs. Wirz will ask the students to pull out the boards and direct them when to answer certain questions on their board. When they have written their answer they are to put their boards in the "ready position," up against their chest so as to shield their response, and then when she says, they raise their boards into the air to reveal their answers. Instead of having the same kids who always raise their hands as the only kids answering questions in class, the white board time insures that every student in engaged, focused on the task at hand, and participating to provide an answer. I think it is great and I am glad that Mrs. Wirz uses it as much as she does. The kids love it too and are always eager to show what they have on their boards, some raising them up before the appropriate time.
SLI Documentary:
One of the team positions for Americorps NCCC teams is the Service Learning Initiator (SLI). Last week the SLIs from another team on campus invited us to their service learning event. They are working in another elementary school in our district, Larchmont Elementary. Their school has the same type of demographics as ours, but they have much fewer students because there school is headed towards closing. This is the last year it will be open and then most of their students will be moving over to our school, FC Joyce, adding to the overcrowding there. It was great to be able to talk with another group about some of their experiences in the schools. The main portion of the event was dedicated to watching a documentary entitled, California Public Schools: First to Worst. The documentary is rather focused on blaming the downfall of the California education system on a particular proposition that lower tax money, which is possible a bit limited and unfair in perspective. But either way it was a very interesting video to watch and showed some really truly unbelievable conditions at these schools.
Click Here to watch the documentary
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