Nothing out of the Ordinary

A One-on-One Opportunity:

This week's classroom hours were mostly spent working one-on-one with a particularly troublesome student. The teacher warned me that me that this student had been having problems in the classroom. Well, he was causing most the problems in the class. I could tell that he was hungry for attention from the other students, and seemed to have an emotional need that wasn't being fulfilled. I quietly observed his behaviors. They ranged from yelling out comments in class (some of which were inappropriate) to asking for unnecessary help.

It was easy to see that the teacher was losing patience.  Even the students were flashing glares of annoyance making comments such as "that was mean" or "be quiet". Because of his behavioral issues, he was separated from the rest of the class. He was assigned to sit in the very back of the room, and he was the only student on his row. Although he wasn't separated on the basis of race, the separation brought the "separate but equal" doctrine to mind. I realize that the separation might have be necessary for the safety and well-being of the other students. However, I couldn't help but wonder how his being separate from the rest of the class affected the label he put on himself along with the label other kids attached to him. This label can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy and affect the mental, social, and emotional development of the individual. Separating the individual from the rest of the class is likely to reinforce that label. While I don't know the best way to handle such a situation, I believe that as future educators it is important to build up our students and give them each an equal opportunity to succeed.

Teachers, Developmental Differences, and Learning Modalities

Today was my first day in the classroom, and it was a lot of fun! Let's just say that kids love visitors and new faces. I was able to work with the kids one on one, and take time to observe them in the classroom. During my two hours I was able to make a lot of connections with what we are learning in class. Here are some things that I learned while observing and participating with the class:

What a teacher does all day: 
Teaching elementary school is no walk in the park. Teachers have to be alert and active all day. They have to practice extreme flexibility because all of the kids are on different levels. Teachers have to be patient. That is one thing that I noticed while observing. It is so easy to lose patience. Teachers is really tiring because teachers move from one learn learning modality to the next within a matter of minutes. I was surprised by how many times the teacher switched between these learning modalities, even within the same lesson.

The developmental differences I saw in the children in the classroom: I never realized how different the kids were in their ability to attain information and grasp various concepts. Also some children are much more intelligent and experienced to begin with. It is interesting to see how different children succeed with different subjects. Also, different children do best with specific learning modalities. For ex. the kids had a science lesson on rocks and the earth. Each child had a worksheet they had to fill out. Each child was given a rock, and they had to describe its characteristics, draw a picture of some of its features, and write other observations. They also had microscopes with different rocks underneath them. Kinesthetic and visual learners excelled at this activity, but later on had a hard time listening to verbal instructions. Other students enjoyed listening and had a difficult time with the "hand on" activities. Some students were great with all three learning modalities.

How knowledge of the way people learn relates to the experience of being a teacher: 
I realized how important it is to know how kids learn. Piaget claims that students are active learners. This would suggest that teachers provide many "hands on" activities during classroom time. This would take a lot of preparation and creativity. Vygotsky's theory of learning is focused on the scaffolding. Learners grow best when teachers scaffold within the zone of proximal development. Teacher's need to understand that each student will be on a different level. The teacher will need to adjust his or her scaffolding for each student she works with. I noticed this while observing the class. I noticed that the teacher provided more help to particular students while others received only minimal help. The teacher knew how to adjust her scaffolding for each student in the class. Furthermore, scaffolding had to be adjusted for each child according to the type of learning modality that the teacher was using. It is so important for the teacher to be flexible and patient. That is one thing I want to practice before teaching elementary school.