First day back from Spring Break; (make up for 4/3/13)

Last Tuesday was the first day I was back at my placement after my students had their spring break. I had not seen them in over a week and I was excited to be back. 

This day, while the students did their independent work, they all worked on test. All of the students seemed to be focused on their test. Some were looking at their paper, some looked around every once in a while (which isn’t unexpected for some students). They all sat quietly which Ms. Morrow worked one on one with students on reading in the back of the room.

One this I noticed was one of the students seemed to grow frustrated at something in front her. I couldn’t tell if it was the test itself or with herself. The aid went over to her and asked her what was going on but the student did not give her a response. Not knowing what to do about it, the aid asked/mentioned to Ms. Morrow that the students seemed to be having a hard time. In a sort of brushing off manner Ms. Morrow just said “she’ll figure it out.”  Ms. Morrow has high expectations of this students because she always meets and exceeds them. The student (A) kept on cleaning off her desk, sharpening her pencil, hitting it on her desk and scribbling onto her paper, in a desperate manner. The other students started to pick up on it because of the noise being made and this is when Ms. Morrow decided to pull her out of the classroom and simply said to her “Let me talk to you”. When they came back in, A just began to do the same thing over again (scribbling on her paper) but with crayons this time. I finally figured out that this was one of the methods she used to deal with any strong urge of feelings, whether it be anger or frustration. Ms. Morrow was completely ok with it and I assuming she just asked her if she was doing alright and to use a crayon since it made less noise. Ms. Morrow really encouraged her to do this, along with ripping paper. It was interesting to see how student A let loose some of the tension she was feeling so that she could go back to the task at hand and to see how Ms. Morrow really encouraged her.