Dr. Fleischer
EDG 2701
27 March 2006
In-School Reflection Paper
For my service learning project I worked in Mrs. Evelyn Costa's first grade class at Meadowlane Elementary. Meadowlane is located at 4280 W 8th Avenue in Hialeah, Florida and was constructed in 1957. There are one thousand one hundred and seventy seven students enrolled at Meadowlane Elementary school. Meadowlane has fifty three classrooms and fourteen portables and there are one hundred and seventy nine students per grade level. The school was built on nine acres of land. The student population of meadowlane Elementary is comprised of 97% Hispanic, 2% White, and 1% Asian.
For my service learning project I worked in Mrs. Evelyn Costa's ESOL class. Mrs. Costa's class has twenty five students in her class. Her class is a level two ESOL class. Her class is comprised of students from different countries Many of her students come from non-English speaking households. Some of the students speak English in her class; other students stay quiet because they are not allowed to speak Spanish and have no way of expressing themselves.
When you look at school from the front of the building it looks nice and clean but when you walk inside the building the looks dirty, and in need of repair. The school does not have enough trash cans and cleaning personnel. The school needs to repainted and cleaned. One day I was passing by the boys and girls bathroom and there was a strong smell of feces and urine around that area of the building. I did not like the fact that these children had to use an unsanitary bathroom. Most of the bathrooms in the school were dirty and smelled like urine and feces.
On my first day observing the students at Meadowlane Elementary I interviewed the teacher. Below are the questions and answers to the questions. Mrs.Costa, how do you work with students from varying cultural backgrounds? I try to treat everyone equally but the fact is that we all have biases. As a teacher I