A final Goodbye to everyone

When I first found out that a requirement to pass this course was being placed in a low income area in State, I freaked out a ltitle bit. I no its an aweful thing to say, but I didn't know what to expect. I went to a Catholic school my whole life until ninth grade, when I switched over to my towns High School. I didn't know what kind of place I was going to have to walk into multiple times, but when I walked in I was shocked to see that the building was kept up beautifully.

I had a great time going every week, for that matter it was the highlight of my week. The children that I worked with really ended up having a close connection that I actually teared up a bit when I was leaving them on my last visit, because I felt like I could have made a couple of them a little more excited about learning than they already were, so I left with a feeling of accomplishment. The children really appreciated the time that me along with my fellow peers spent with them, because we payed attention to them, and saw their learning potential.

Along with getting close to the children I tutored, we often talked about our experiences in our College class. We would all talk about our visits and any questions or concerns, and for some people they just needed to vent about a horrible experience. When I first started the class I was concerned that I would never feel comfortable, but I just wanted to say to everyone, Its been a great semester with all of you, and I hope we can all stay in contact with one another because it was a great experience, and I was comfortable around all of you! Have a great summer and good luck in being a teacher, because....What Kind of Teacher Do You Want To Be!!! =)

Prompt #2 Claude Goldenberg

I spend the major of my time in my kindergarten class with Mrs. C. The class size is around twenty students approximated evenly divided between boys and girls, however even though it might be divided gender wise, it is still an extremely diverse group of students. Twelve students are African American, 3 white, 5 Spanish/Latino, and 2 Japanese. Of all the weeks I have volunteered there, I have only seen white teachers, as well as a white principal and white secretary. After observing for a couple weeks, I did take it upon myself to do some behind the scenes research on the Infoworks website. (www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu/) and saw that the majority of the students were African-Americans and \Hispanics. Most of these students live in poverty. While being my kindergarten class i noticed that there is mostly Hispanic children and a few African American students and maybe 1 or 2 white students in the class. On the days I volunteer, I have the opportunity to be able to go to two classrooms, I spend a good majority of my time in Kindergarten and then a little over a half hour in first grade. Looking at the dynamic of my classroom I see that there are more African American student in my Kindersargen class, as well as Spanish/Latino in comparison to my first grade class which consists mostly of Latino students. One week I go to school really early and noticed how much the students work with each other
The other day when I was working with my three kindergarten children, I was listening to another group doing the CVC words and the teacher assistant explain the directions, but she was bilingual and she had a couple of the students that were fully fluent in their home language, but they still fully understood English as well, but they needed to work with her so that there was no miscommunication among the work. As I was watching my children and keeping them busy working on their work, I was taking an overall look at the others groups and how they all interacted with one another. I was watching other children that were finding the work easy, helping peers that were stuggling a bit. I can relate this to myself and my own personal experiences in school, sometimes just listening to the teacher I don’t understand the message that is trying to be portrayed, but after hearing another class member or consulting with a friend I understand the information better.
So an example of this is the children in the other group that I was just observing were talking in a different language to help one another, but then it got the point across because the children knew what they were being asked and they didn’t feel slighted. Some children probably felt insecure that they were speaking in a different language and having someone else overhearing then, might have made them nervous, but there teacher assistant had assured them that it was ok, and that it is good to help one another because that’s how you grow and learn.
This experience made me think of Claude Goldenberg. The reason that this experience made me think of him is because he said it that “teachers need to be effective and how the teachers need to help the students more that English is not there first language, and that they might not use it unless in school.” the more they use it the more they will be comfortable using it and won’t even have to think about when to speak it and when not to. Just observing the other group not my own, I could pin point some of the children that have had more exposure to the English language, and the ones that were looking at words like they were foreign, which in some cases they probably were. After reading the article by Goldenberg he states that the children will learn from their experiences and if it is difficult for them they will get motivated and want to be able to learn and do well with it. As being trained to be a teacher in the making I want my children to feel comfortable with knowing a different language, as well as being well versed in English, so that they are conscious of what is going on.

Prompt #6 Christopher Kliewer

In everyday settings so many people get mixed messages, because of miss communication, and that often lead into a bad result. When deciding on the profession of being a teacher it is extremely crucial to be able to have appropriate communication going on in the classroom. If there is not a proper amount of communication it often leads to frustration and discouragement, and these traits can be portrayed in the early years because you need to give a good foundation to keep the children motivated. In the classroom it is important to “know your students” and by saying this you need to be able to take into account the socio cultural and linguistic differences of your students and be able to communicate with sensitivity and responsiveness to that. A teacher should never have a bias being in a classroom, just full respect for all individuals; because that is the message we want to teach as well.
I can’t really think of any time that fits this better than the first time I ever went and I helped the little girl Alyica with the hundred day of school crown making activity. The reason why this is stuck in my head is because it was meant to be a fairly easy activity, that the whole class would be doing, but she was struggling beyond belief. My heart really went out to her because as all the children were finishing up she was still working, and I wanted her to go meet up with the rest of the students in her class, but at the same point I could not just give her the answers. So we went over making her crown multiple times until she knew she had ten foam shapes on the ten triangles to equal one hundred pieces. At the end of the time I had with her, I went up to the teacher, and she was explaining how the little girl needed to go for some academic testing, because one minute she knows all the information and the next you could keep asking her and she has no idea what you’re talking about or what to do. As she was saying that I thought back to when I was helping her and I did realize that, because when we were counting to ten the numerous times we had to, she would say “1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.” and then the next time she would say “1.2.5.8.9.3.10” and I was extremely confused because she had said both answers in 100% confidence.
I found this experience relatable to Christopher Kliewer, in “Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome” speaks about human reciprocity, which relates very much to democracy and communication in a classroom. Human reciprocity is basically when you are in a society where everyone works and interacts with each other. I believe this tied in well to my experience with Alycia because the teacher was working with her before I had the opportunity and then another student teacher worked with her, so we were all trying to offer her some incite to see her excel. Each member of the community has something different to bring to the table and everyone else in the group values what they bring. Kliewer also talks about Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, who was a psychologist. He believes in a higher ordered thinking, which makes us all unique in a way that we can exist in both social and cultural relationships. It is important for children in a classroom to make these relationships in order to better communicate in the classroom community.

Prompt #5 John Dewey

A culturally competent teacher works with the family and community, it is extremely crucial that there is family participation. An example of family participation in my Kindergarten class, is that there was a school bake sale and the parent just had to purchase something from their local grocery store, or bake something themselves. They did not have to spend a tone of money, just a couple dollars. My Kindergarten teacher was very turned off by the fact that a good majority of the parent did not want to bring any food in, or be any part involved in the mini fundraiser. One little girl’s parents did not have the time to go to the store; however they sent her to school with a $15. donation as well as a note explaining that they did not go to the grocery store.
Being a teacher we are faced with many situations. A challenge a teacher might have with a parent is if a child is not doing well in a class, the parent might blame it on the teacher’s way of teaching as a defense mechanism. Another very important common issue is that teachers become sadden by the fact that some parents do not want to be involved in a child’s life to help them excel in school. This is something that needs to change in schools, that parents need to make the time for their children if their willing to have them.
Another way to possibly fix this is maybe once a month giving homework that can be fun and interactive so that the children can do it with their parents or grandparents or any guardian. But this does not help for the children whose parents work, an overnight shift, or the ones that just don’t care enough to become involved based on a bad school experience in their school days. Having parents involved in a child’s life is extremely important in the child’s growth as an individual. When a child is very young, (the elementary level) it is the most crucial time in their growth, and having a guardian there with them, to help them with either problem solving for school, or just life scenarios is beyond influential. A parent does not have to be involved in every fundraiser or be a chaperon on every field trip, but having them as active members of the school community help them stay involved and aware of what is going on in schools.
I believe this ties in with John Dewey’s article because we have to be aware of different social groups. “Such social groups are made of people with common interests and common ideals.” But this becomes a form of socialization, which is extremely crucial especially in the early years of development.
For communities to interact they need to do just that, communicate, connect between each other. It is a teacher’s job to start this communication between his or herself and between the students. An example of this would be, every morning the class starts off with going over the days of the week, as well as the month and the year. Ever week, they went over different letters of the alphabet, the past week was “M” and everyone in the classroom had an opportunity, some children would say a word like “cat” and the other students would try to help out, and see why they thought that. With this example students can see what other students have experienced before, and from it learn and grow from the experience, what Dewey says “bring(s) peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible connections with one another” this makes for a stronger school community.

Prompt #4 Johnson

Being a teacher isn’t an easy job, that many think it is. There are bais’ when students enter the classroom as well as when teacher enter the classroom, based upon what they are learning at home. My teacher Mrs. C, is the kindergarten teacher, you cannot see her slighting any children due to ethnicity or economic status. If I was not told what kind of school I was going to be entering I would have probably been taken back, in the thought that “oh these kids don’t want to learn anything.” However, that is not the case in anyway the three kids that I take in my kindergarten class as well as the three in my first grade class Mrs. M’s class are extremely eager to learn. The school I volunteer at is 85 % African American with 15 % being white or Japanese and Asian. When I walked in the first couple of times, I was racially stereotyping the children, but after my first time working with them I was thrilled to see how well they picked up information, such as the CVC words we were going over, as well as reading short stories that were provided.
Some of the challenges faced by teachers are incorporating all different diversities into the classroom, so everyone feels welcomed and valued. I do not consider myself a prejudiced person, but I do sometimes have a weakness for falling for stereotypes. Having this experience I believe has made me a stronger person to deal with all the possibilities that could come up in any situation.
The article, "Our House is on Fire" by Allan Johnson, discusses the idea of privilege. Johnson says in his article that “when white school children, for example, are assumed to be competent until they show otherwise, while student of color are assumed to be incompetent until they prove themselves, then having the benefit of the doubt becomes a form of privilege.” Half the time when we are slighting people of color we don’t mean it, it is just in the culture or our background. A lot of it just has to do with how unaware we are of others and different lifestyles and cultures. Johnson defines privilege as a social advantage that is both unearned and comes to people simply because they happen to belong to a particular social category. “Race is not the same as ethnicity, which is a matter of culture that anyone can learn; the concept of race is uniquely about the body. When a group is raced and any group can be raced it is assigned characteristics such as the degree of intelligence, creativity, goodness, honestly, trustworthiness, and courage.” I do believe that there will be stereotypes and misconceptions for a long time to come, but being a strong teacher, in the sense that we all will not fall victim to having students proving themselves worthy of an education based on ethnicity. We need to see the student as a whole and give them our best effort to see them excel in a positive learning environment.

Prompt #3 Shor

Shor argues that participation leads to active members of society. Assessments do not often include many elements of participation. In both my kindergarten class and my first grade class I never observed a test, or a writing assignment. However, in Mrs. C’s class my kindergarten classroom they would often draw a picture in the morning and have to write a little paragraph on what they drew. But on my very first Friday visit, it happened to be the hundredth day of school. The first grade and the higher grades really celebrated it by doing fun activities in their class. As I was talking to other friends that volunteered the same day in the same school, some of them said that their classrooms made necklaces out of fruit loops and cheerios.
In my classroom, they were making crowns. The teacher showed an example from last year’s class. How they went about making it, is they all received a large piece of red construction paper, with ten triangles on it. They were given little foam shapes, and they had to put ten shapes in the ten triangles they had on the large construction paper. They had to have either the teacher or I check and make sure that they had the correct amount of shapes in each triangle before they were allowed to glue any down. Once there crown was dry they were allowed to cut it out and then the teacher and I stapled it so that it would fit the Childs head, and they could wear it for the hundredth day of school.
But in all of this fun and excitement where is the connection to that and school work. Well, this was tied into school work because it was a mini math lesson. They also had to listen to the teacher’s instructions to not just dump all the pieces into one or two triangles. One of the little girls I worked with Alyicia, had a hard time grasping counting numbers, so she became very confused counting to ten, ten times. So I took my time with her, because if I was the one that could have gotten her back on track I would have been ecstatic. I spoke to Mrs. M after the class to discuss the trouble she was having with it, and she was already aware, but she was happy I spent the time with her to help her excel.
I loved my first visit to my school, because it was very interactive with the kids, and I believe they enjoyed it as much as I did. The entire class in the class had their own crown to create and call their own, by using their sense of creativity. This form of assessment wasent extremely brain racking, it was understandable for all of the students in all ethnic, linguistic, and sociocultural characteristics to participate in. It was not an assignment that they had to go spend money on, all supplies where distributed in the classroom, as that everyone had around the same foam shapes and glue. It led the student to be themselves, but in the boundaries of following the teachers lead from a prior example.
Some children are not engaged in school at all, but sometimes when there are laid back fun days it really hits close to home, and the child realizes “Hey, this isn’t that bad, I can do it.” That is exactly the type of attitude we want them to leave with as well. As quoted from Shor, “To socialize students, education tried to teach them the shape of knowledge and current society, the meaning of past event, the possibilities for the future, and their place in the world they live in. In forming students’ conception of self and the world, teachers can present knowledge in several ways, as a celebration of the existing society, or as critical inquiry into power and knowledge as they relate to student experience.” I believe their hundredth day of school activity was a prime example of this quote, because the teacher was as much of an active member as were the students.

Prompt #1 The School

As part of a requirement for my major in the teaching program, everyone has to complete a FNED course, which gets college students like me and my fellow classmates a chance to experience being in a school with young children. We are assigned to low income city schools. My first day at the school was February 12, 2010. When I woke up that morning I didn’t know what to think or what I would be faced with. My mind was racing I knew I wouldn’t feel better till I got to the school and saw the kids. My friend Amanda, and Kayla and I were all assigned to the same school so we decided to go all together the first time. As we were driving we were observing the area. Near our school, there were a lot of new building, they are newer schools, the building were crystal clear, no graffiti which is honestly what I thought I would have seen and I was more shocked when I didn’t see it. Our school is direct next to tenement houses, but they are brand new and very well taken care of. The City school that I volunteer at, is faced in an awkward direction, when you pull in, you can only go so far, because there are gates that don’t let cars or busses pull up to the front of the school, I found this a little strange, because this makes the parents have to park at the side of the school and watch their children make it all the way up to the front of the school by themselves, which for a little kid is a long walk.
When Kayla, Amanda, and I got out of the car we were remarking at how nice the school looked, it is a very nice building, only when you look it, it does not strike you as an elementary school, because it was rather large. When we got to the front door we had to wait to be buzzed in, which made me feel good that they do take the time to pay attention to who is entering the school. The office is directly to the left when you enter the door. The secretaries did not pay any attention to us as we walked in the office looking for the binder we needed to put our volunteer sheets in, they were actually yelling at a couple kids. In the beginning it was rather intimidating, but we all started to feel more comfortable after.
Kayla and Amanda and I went our separate ways to our own kindergarten class rooms. I met my first grade teacher Mrs. C. She seemed very nice, but hard on the kids because she wants to see them excel. That week they were doing the letter “L” so the front board was covered with “L” words and they did a couple activities in the morning which incorporated all the kids. The class room was decorated very nicely in the alphabet and numbers.
Later on we all switched to our First grade class room, and I met my teacher Mrs. M. She was extremely nice. Her class room was covered with number lines, alphabets, words. It was very color full so it grabbed a lot of attention. When I was working with some of the kids I had them reference some of the posters that covered the wall so they could use some of the things that they knew and apply it to what has been in the class room all year. After my first day there I was eager to go back, I had a great experience, the teachers and students even the school and location was not what I thought it was going to be.

First Blog: About Me

My name is Gianna, but everyone calls me Gi, or Gigi. I am 18 years old. Ever since I was very little i always wanted to teach elementary school, preferable third grade, but I know want to teach First Grade. When I'm not at school, I am either working, at the gym, out with friends or playing with my two baby poodles, named Chanel and Zoey, they are both 6 month old sisters. I never have a chance to sit down relax and watch tv, however my favorite TV show is The Hills. I was extremely excited to start this class because I knew it was a requirement that I would be placed in a school and have to work with kids, and I know this is going to spark my interest to still want to be a Teacher, because there is no better feeling than to make a child Smile. I have taugh CCD at my church for years and I also taught dance, and I loved every moment of it, i believe that my experience with that really cement that fact that I wanted to be a teacher, and that is why i am at RIC, because it is one of the best teaching schools in the country!! =)

I love my family more than anything in the world I would do anything for them! I am also a very quiet, shy and reserved person intill you get to know me!

Thanks for reading

Gi =)