A Study

Adam Schlich
PPB Journals
Portal Middle High School: Mrs. Aubrey 1. Orientation to School: I was not able to get a formal orientation to the school until the week after spring break. This was not due to the school administration schedule but rather my own laziness. On the day of my orientation I reported to the middle schools vice principals office, Mrs. Spince, and I proceeded to ask her questions about the schools demographics, testing, textbooks, funding for school clubs, and how students are reprimanded. We talked about all of the above for about forty five minutes then she directed me towards the nurse’s office and I was off. While I was with the nurse we discussed her background and basic duties such as treating students with diabetes and distributing daily meds to those who need them. The nurse that was there the day I visited was actually a nursing student at East Georgia and she only works a few days a week. After I talked with the nurse I walked to the library and talked to the media specialist Mrs. Gorver we discussed what she does including but not limited to choosing books for the library, assisting teachers with tech support, assisting in standardized testing supervision, helping students with choosing books for projects, helping students writing papers, and starting a book club. After meeting with Mrs. Gorver I had a meeting scheduled with the student counselor but he was not there. As for a tour of the school the teacher I shadow Mrs. Aubrey walked me around the two hallway school explaining to me that the main hall is for the High School students and the smaller side hall way is for the middle school. She also took me to the library which although is rather cozy fits the small school well. In the library there are 2 computer labs for the teachers to take their students to do group work. Off of the library there is also a work room with an industrial printer, a wall full of VHS tapes, and a large laminator. 2. Teacher Duties: Two teacher duties that I observed were hall duty and bathroom duty. For hall duty Mrs. Aubrey must stand outside her door and watch all of the kids walk down the hall and pull the kids off to the side that are chewing gum, have pants to low, or are just acting bad and “reprimand” them. Although this sounds easy I assure you it is not… the second teacher duty that I observed was bathroom duty. For bathroom duty Mrs. Aubrey takes the kids, sometimes row by row sometimes just the whole class, and lines them up out by the bathroom. After this she lets usually three or four in at a time. As the kids use the facilities she must keep track of those who want to get water from the fountain, those in the bathroom, and those in line on the wall. I wasn’t sure why they do this with 8th grade students but apparently so many kids would leave to go to the bathroom the teachers decided to just have a set bathroom time. 3. Observing a Whole Class Session: In my whole class observation I observed my teacher reviewing for the math section of the CRCT. During this session my teacher played fraction bingo with the students of the class. In this instance there were only two 6th graders in the whole class. During the bingo game one of the students did just not want to play this game, he would scoot his chair back and walk around to avoid having to solve the problems. The other child was actually doing very well and asked for help on any problems he would have trouble with but he did not want to show any of his work. My teacher, Mrs. Aubrey calmed the one student down and got him to sit and showed both of them that if you write your work on a sheet of paper it is not that hard. The students are motivated by a positive reinforcement system to where if they participate and finish their work they can choose a piece of candy after class. There were numerous posters that encouraged trying you hardest for instance one of the posters read “You can’t hit the ball if all you are thinking about is the 1000 ways you can miss it.” Along with all of the posters there was a cork board where the teacher makes a theme every month and this month there were a bunch of quotes from people such as Albert Einstein, Muhammad Ali, and Martin Luther King.

B/W/F Smart Board

A/B/M A/W/M

4. Small Group Interaction: In my small group interaction the assignment was to complete an exercise in the CRCT math workbook, I’m not sure if there are different subject workbooks. Not to my surprise the students did not want to do the work at all, however I did my best to get as much done as I possibly could. From what I have found the way the questions are given in the CRCT book are boring and bland and with a class full of ADD and ADHD students there is little chance of keeping their attention for more than 10 minutes. Most of the questions were simple straight line equations and the students had no idea what to do, even though they went over it in the class the previous day. I tried not to just give them the answer but let them think through the problem using what I would consider something slightly resembling scaffolding. Although the group I assisted did not finish the assignment in class they did get the right answers and not just pick answers at random like the majority of the class. I’m not quite sure what could have been done in order to make this group work go better because the majority of the students just refuse to listen to the teacher. 5. Working with Individuals 1: When doing this activity I had a lot of trouble because the particular student really just didn’t want to be in school. The teacher had given the students an assignment that asked the students to solve a number of math problems that could possibly be on the CRCT I walked over to a one of the girls raising her hand and she asked me how to do a problem I asked her to think back to the first 5 minutes of class, only 10 minutes into class, and remember what the teacher had said about these types of questions. The student told me that she wasn’t paying attention because she had already done the problem… I proceed to show her how to do the problems and she continued to listen. When I was done I asked her if she understood how to do it, she said “I think so” and I just assumed that she did. When I think back I’m not really sure if she did really grasp the concept but I really hope that she did. I also think that the environment that I was in could have really made a difference, students were talking all around us and I think that it was really hard for her to hear me. 6. Working with Individuals 2: The student that I choose to do this assignment is probably the exact opposite of me. He was a short little African American 6th grader that was extremely shy. In the activity I was talking to the student about his accelerated reading book. The student proceeded to tell me about the book he was reading and what the plot of the story was. He seemed like he was really into the novel and even said that he really wants to read the next two in the trilogy. I also asked the student if he liked to read and he said that he didn’t really like to read the books that he is made to read in school but she really likes the books that he is able to choose for accelerated reading. I say that this student is the exact opposite of me culturally but I don’t think that I really learned anything that I haven’t been exposed to yet, however the student did say one thing that I thought was a bit different and I just had never thought about is that he can’t ask for help at home because his parent don’t know how to read so if he gets stuck on a word sometimes he doesn’t understand what is going on until a few paragraphs later. I found this interesting because all of the kids I knew growing up had parents that had all graduated from college. 7. Student Behaviors in the School: In the mornings and between classes I would stand outside the door to the room or walk around the classroom as the students walked about to and from their classrooms. Some of the things that I head were crazy, for instance one day I was standing outside of the door and I heard a group of kids talking about Pot. When I was in middle school I didn’t even know what Pot was, I was just astounded that possible 6th graders were talking about drugs, I mean in 6th grade I was worried about being two short not about drugs. Another example of a student that was showing some semblance of kindness was when I saw the really physically disabled kids for the first time and the nurse that takes care of them had dropped her folder that was filled with probably 20 pages of paper and a young girl ran right up and helped her while the rest of the students were only worried about getting to class on time. After that day I noticed that that girl was actually one of the “cool kids” but she also wasn’t that girl that associated herself with a click she would talk to all of the kids even those that seem to be loners and outcasts. One thing that I did find very odd is that there really wasn’t any racism or sexism; I would have thought that in the Deep South that there would have been a lot of social segregation between races. 8. No Child Left Untested: The main standardized test at the middle school level is the CRCT I chose to talk to my teacher, Mrs. Aubrey, about the test. As a special education teacher Mrs. Aubrey hates the CRCT because she has to read almost every question aloud to most of her students because many have trouble reading. To prepare for the CRCT the students have books in every class that are CRCT practice. When talking to a student about the CRCT they said that the books really help but they still have trouble because the test does not only have stuff on it from that year but previous years and it is hard for them to remember. I wasn’t able to observe the test because I haven’t taken the class you have to take to be present during the CRCT but Mrs. Aubrey said that it is just like any other standardized test, really quiet and boring. 9. Disruptive Behavior in the Classroom: during class one day while reading Ann Frank a young black boy started to act out by throwing things and talking while the teacher was reading. Although I didn’t talk to the student afterwards I asked the teacher, Mrs. Lewis why he acts out in almost every class and she said it was because he can’t read so he acts out. I could defiantly se this happening because Mrs. Aubrey says that he acts out in almost all of his classes and all the teachers do is send him to the principle. I’m my schooling I never had a kid like this but I wonder if he would not be better off in a one on one situation where the teacher cold work with him on his reading. Although Mrs. Lewis didn’t say it I think that because he couldn’t read he was bored and that is why he started to act out. 10. Textbook Analysis and Evaluation: the textbook that I looked at was the CRCT practice book which was the main textbook used in 8th grade math. While looking though the book I had a few objections and things that I would change. For one the book was very boring, I think that one of the reasons that the kids have so much trouble staying on tack while doing work out of it is because there is nothing that relates to them. I think that a problem like “Jonnies house is 5 minutes to the left, Jenny house is 9 minutes to the right, Tommie’s house is 6 minutes past Jonnies house. If Susie’s house is the same distance from school as Tommie’s house but to the right how far is Susie’s house from Jenny’s house?” I just think that a problem that is a little bit more personal would help them think like it was a little bit easier. Also the book is all black and white which is totally boring although it may be made simple so that students don’t wonder to look at other stuff on the page I think that if it is so boring students are just going to get bored of staring at black and white all day. 11. School Punishment: when talking about school punishment she seemed as though she has a problem with how the teachers deal with students who act out and I would too. She explained that whenever a student acts out the first thing a teacher uses is silent lunch in which the student has to sit with the teacher for lunch and not talk. I have no problem with this, but next a teacher sends the student right to the principle for ISS. Now in the time that I have been at Portal there are some kids that are in ISS almost every week. I like Mrs. Aubrey find a huge problem with this. If there is a student that misbehaves that often there must be something that triggers that and for most of these kids that act out it is there home life. Along with ISS they are also aloud to paddle kids which came to a surprise to me because I thought that was so medieval. 12. Other Grade Level: For my other grade level experience I went to the preschool that is at Portal. While I was there I observed three main activities. The first was just play time, the second arts and crafts time, and the third was cleanup time. Although they were only preschoolers they were much more well behaved than the 6th and 8th. During play time I played a make shift corn hole game and made a ramp for hot wheels with a group of boys and helped a little girl put cloths on her toy doll. During arts and crafts I sat with the same group of boys that I had played with. We colored out of an ironman coloring book and to my surprise theirs rivaled mine in awesomeness. In the classroom there was no desks only a table and there was no seating chart so for my seating arrangement chart I will just lay out the classroom.

Teacher Desk Arts table Computers

Play area

13. Doing a Teacher Activity 1: For this activity a teacher asked me to go to the printer room and print out 70 math review packets. During the process I had to refill the paper in the printer and that was hard because the printer in the size of a VW bug. I think that this was important because it showed me just a tiny thing that I should expect to deal with. It also showed me that if I were a real teacher I could not have left my students in the room alone for that amount of time. It also showed me that when working at a small school you will not have the higher technology or those that have the knowledge to help you out so you have to learn how to be self-reliant 14. Doing a Teacher Activity 2: For this activity a teacher asked me to go to the printer room again but this time to cut 24 pieces of billboard paper into the size of posters. Unlike my other activity I had actually done this before and I thought it would be quite easy. However when I got there all of the roles of paper were just sitting on the ground not up on the piece of “equipment” that helps you cut it so when I got there I just decided to put it up there by myself, little did I know those roles weigh a tone and I found it very difficult to put them up. After about 5 minutes the media specialist walked in and told me that they just use scissors. This taught me that when I go to teach for the first time I should not be afraid to ask for help and instruction. 15. Whole Class Session: For my whole class session I read Ann Frank aloud to students. During this activity I simply read the book aloud and stopped to talk about anything that seemed important, for example stopping to explain what certain vocabulary words are or to explain an event that was referenced in the text but was not explained. I found this very intimidating because I’m not very good at reading and I was afraid that I might mess up. I found this very insightful because this is what I will be doing when I become a teacher and I also got a lot from it because it let me know that I can in fact read to a large group of students and not bore them to death. 16. Whole Class Session 2: for this whole class session I reviewed with the class how to graph from slope intercept form for a test. During this instruction I found a lot of resistance from a large amount of the students who clearly did not understand the material, for example I would ask what 2, in the equation y=2x+7, represents and only a few of the students knew the answer. Although I tried my dandiest I just could not rack it into their brains. Eventually the teacher, Mrs. Anderson just told me to move on. I think that I gave a good review to the students that knew how to do the problems but I don’t think I did a very good job in teaching those who didn’t know how to do the problems.