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.