Last week the word that resonated with me was language and I have more questions than answers…. How do we teach language? How do we include all forms, but also make sure we are teaching “proper English”? But what is “proper”? As someone who has grown up with my mom correcting how I speak and how I write, how can I connect with those who speak differently? I want to work with students and connect with them. However, we all come from a very different background. How can I inspire students who can’t connect with me?

Sorry these are a little late! I had my first field placement today.

The school I am at is a 9-12 public magnet school in Center City. I am with Mr. T's 10th grade English classes, and beginning next week I will also be with Ms. R's 11th grade American History class. 

The first thing I notice when I walk into this school are the colors. Every wall is a bright shade of orange, green, yellow, blue, or purple. I come in during lunch time so all the students are out of class. As I walk to Mr. T’s class I see students hanging out, eating lunch, and walking around in the hallways. I do not see many teachers, and the students are not supervised. I walk into Mr. T’s class and he is having lunch while a technology class goes on. This particular room has big windows, bright blue colored walls, and five tables instead of desks. On the walls are various posters about the core values of the school, inspirational quotes, project instructions, and more. Immediately, I can feel the culture of this school is very warm, safe, mature, and fun.

This was my second visit to my independent school placement in center city with Teacher P's second grade classroom. We had morning meeting again where we played an interactive game discussing what we were going to do during the weekend. During the student's half hour at PE, Teacher P and I discussed the upcoming math lesson, and how one student struggles to work independently with his math work. She told me that this student, T, will be starting during this coming week to take medication for ADD symptoms. I am not sure if he has been diagnosed for ADD--I assume so since he is starting medication. She expressed some concern about never having taught a student on this medication before. She also mentioned that the adjustment process may be a difficult one, and that she was anticipating that. I am curious to see how T is doing this week since he started taking the medication--updates to come.

School: Elementary school (Pre-K – 5th grade) in West Philadelphia

Class: Kindergarten

Class size: 23 students

Teacher: Ms. Lowe

Aide: Ms. Monay

**Pseudonyms are used in these notes.

Placement

Field Notes #2

February 5, 2013

Last week at the end of my praxis visit, the main classroom teacher and I decided to implement a system of notes to guide my visits to her classroom. This is mainly because she has a meeting for 20 minutes when the students first arrive so there is another teacher in the classroom directing morning meeting. So, when I walked into the classroom today, there was a box labeled “Teacher Ellen” that had several sticky notes inside of it.

The first sticky gave me instructions for the beginning of the day: “please take down the New Years posters on the bulletin board at the back of the classroom and put up the new posters in the box.” The classroom has several bulletin boards, each of which consistently display student work. However, not all student work can be displayed on the board because this teacher teaches the entire 6th grade language arts/social studies classes. Sometimes, the work that is displayed on the boards is chosen randomly (as evidenced by the system I used last week to hang up posters in the hallways, basically put them up until there is no more space). However, sometimes, the student work chosen for display is based on the grade that the students received. Today, that is the case with the student work that I was asked to put up.  All of the work in the pile to hang up had a received a grade of A+, A, or A-.

In word.

http://schoolmutiny.tumblr.com/
http://zoecohenart.wordpress.com/

Please use this space for this week.  Thanks.