L13's blog

Leaving My Placement

I haven’t really ever felt concerned about leaving my placement before. For some reason, this time I do. I think this is particularity because I have grown very attached to several students and the host teachers were so wonderful to me, especially with the cross-visitations. When I asked a day ahead of time, they let me still bring someone to visit – twice.

That being said, I’m very excited to thank them for everything. Here is my problem – there is an aid in the classroom who also acts as a teacher but has not played a huge role in my experience – can I give the other two teachers a card/gift certificate but not the aid? Is there a classy way to do this?

 Also, is there something that I should give to the students? I plan on making sure I say goodbye to all of the students, especially the ones that I have worked more with but if I give cards to the teachers will they notice if I don’t give the students something?

 Just some thoughts – looking forward to being done but also sad to leave something that I had very little expectations for and have learned a lot from.

Alex has a learning disability – I’m not exactly sure what it is but he has a personal aid in the classroom. This aid is only there for two hours at the beginning of the day and then Alex is on his own.

 After she leaves Alex gets visibly different – he is less focused and disrupts his classmates more. This past week, during one student’s computer time, Alex kept going up to the monitor and turning it off. Then eventually he just put his hand on it and never let it go so the girl on the computer started to ask him to move his hand. Alex wouldn’t. So I went over and said, “Alex, Grace is using her words and asking you to stop, did you hear her?” No response. Then I said, “Alex you need to listen to her and take your hand of the monitor. Lets go together and find another lesson to do.” Nothing. Then a teacher came over and physically moved Alex by pulling his hand down and then picking him up and moving him to the other side of the classroom. While this was clearly effective, it is not the first thing I would think to do – in fact it was probably the last.

 When is it okay to physically move students from doing something? I always thought that physicality was reserved for dangerous situations. Does this change when a student can’t process words? By moving them are we demonstrating that communication doesn’t work? 

Discipline:

While the students have “free lesson time” they can chose to do their lesson at a table or on the big carpet in the middle of the classroom. If they do the lesson in the middle of the classroom, they have to grab a small individual carpet to put their lesson on – so the pieces of the lesson don’t get lost.

 This past week, two boys, the oldest two in the class at 6yrs, were doing a puzzle on the rug without a personal rug for the lesson. I asked them, “what do you need it you are doing a lesson on the big rug?” one of the boys responded, “We don’t need a personal rug for puzzles.” I said, “Alright, good to know, thank you.” Later, I saw a different student doing a puzzle and using a personal rug.

 This made me feel really awkward and unsure of my place in the classroom. The student was probably just being over cautious and didn’t in fact need a personal rug – but it got me to thinking – how can we, as visiting teachers, truly discipline without being aware and knowing all of the rules? I was able to clarify with the teacher about the policy on personal rugs – she said it depends on the puzzle.

Samantha:

 I have mentioned this student before in passing but I thought it would be worthwhile (mostly for myself) to devote an entire field post to her.

 Samantha is the most adorable Chinese 4 year old. Her parents moved here right before she was born. From the beginning of my placement, in January, she has been kind of a pet=project of mine, a student who I always try to work with because she is more quiet and doesn’t seem to socially click with the other students. She slowly started to open up to me and we would have small conversations while working on lessons together.

 A few weeks ago during a full class circle, the teacher made the announcement that Samantha would be moving back to China at the end of the school year. I spoke to the teachers privately afterward and found out that Samantha’s parents were getting worried that Samantha was beginning to like the United States too much – or at least they were worried she wouldn’t want to live in China and would never visit family in China so they were going to move back as a family.

 After that, Samantha has started to talk with me a lot less. It is also very interesting because on Monday her English is very choppy and almost impossible to understand, comparatively, on Wednesday it gets bit better and she can understand sentences. I think it has to do with her family speaking Chinese at home over the weekend – so she gets more accustomed to it over the weekend – maybe she has fallen back into a pattern by Wednesday?

Field Notes: Spring Break

So these are unofficial field notes – just wanted to share some thoughts. Last week was a great week at my placement and very informative (see recently posted field notes) but this week is Spring Break for my placement so I haven’t been there at all. And two weeks ago I was on Spring Break so I missed going to my placement then. I guess I am saying, I feel anxiety being away from my placement so often in the past three weeks especially when my students are younger and may not remember me in addition to my role in the classroom being different from their regular teachers. I hope this week when I go back things fall in place and I have not been forgotten. (Or that I have forgotten their names – given that I have a terrible memory.)

Bringing this back to education related talk – rather than just feelings – I wonder if this type of break is good for students and teachers? Yes, I think everyone is burnt out and needs a break sometimes, but if I am worried about forgetting things over these two week breaks, couldn’t students also be forgetting things that are relevant to course material? While the break is needed for the body – does the rest also help or hurt the mind? I would argue that the rest/break helps everything but that might just be my own personal experience and maybe the break can be helpful or hurtful depending on age and learning style.

Field Notes:

This past week, a classmate of ours came to visit my placement with me. It was great. I was really stressed about this experience at first, mainly because I felt like I had to ask my placement advisor about this even though I didn’t know her that well, but it turned out very well. It was great to have a fresh and different perspective. Additionally, it helped me feel more confident in my role in the classroom as I was able to talk through he various day-to-day activities as well as introduce students to my guest.

            Beyond the visit, I was able to continue my conversation with my host teacher about the student who has autism (or suspected autism). Her parents found out that she is indeed on the autism spectrum. The teachers asked the parents how the testing went and they responded well. Apparently, they are not being communicative with the teachers about the student’s needs, especially now that they know that she needs specific care in the classroom. The teachers believe this is still due the parents not being able to admit that their child has autism.

Field Notes – Week 7

More than a week away and the students are really excited about Winter Break – making them somewhat distracted at doing work.            - I wonder if there is a way to involve holiday festivities in student assignments/work? Maybe if the break was acknowledge in class rather than ignored it might make the students more excited about some of their work?

Students are working more on grammar – reading from packets together as a class  - These workbook packets always kind of bother me. I realize that they are necessary but I wonder if maybe they could just be graded to see how the students are doing rather than have them as the driving activity because students ere clearly bored going through this and didn’t seem to really be learning so much as just reciting things. 

Only the same student keeps raising his hand to answer. Mrs. Smith keeps calling on him asking, “how come no one else is awake today?” - I think this also speaks to the set up of the packet and the student’s interest. I talked with the student who was really excited to answer later in the class and he said that he wanted to impress Mrs. Smith. He didn’t talk about his love or enjoyment of the class material.