The city of Salem is located in northwest Oregon in the Willamette Valley. It is the third largest city in the state with just over 154,000 residents, of whom just over 50% are male and the rest female.

             Salem covers 46 square miles of the state, most of which is land; however because there is one major river that runs through the city (the Willamette) and there are several streams and ponds it doesn’t make up a very large portion of the area of the city. 

            The average income for a household in the city is just about $38,000 and the average income for a family is just over $46,000 and about 10.5% of families and 15.0% of the population are below the poverty line, including 20.2% who are under the age of 18. The unemployment rate in Oregon hovers around 11% and the unemployment rate in Salem rests around 9.5% creating a much higher homeless rate, part of which includes hundreds of homeless students in the city of Salem.

            State Government is Salem's largest employer; however, the city also has a large agricultural center and is home to the only state prison in Oregon, which also employs a number of Salem’s residents. This also means that families who have incarcerated members of their families move here to be closer, which translates to high risk youth and a percentage of the population with lower incomes because they are a single income household.

            The city of Salem is not highly diverse with an ethnic make-up that includes 83.1% White, 1.3% African American, 1.5% Native American, 2.4% Asian, 0.5% Pacific Islander, 7.9% from other races, and Hispanic are 14.6% of the population.

            In Southeast Salem where my high school is located the demographic region where the school is could be Salem on a smaller scale. The ethnic, gender and socio-economic make up the area is within in a few percentage points from being exactly the same.

            The school is located in an area of Salem that is a neighborhood. There are family homes and a park surrounding the school. Southeast Salem is also considered to be one of the “safer” neighborhoods in Salem because it is further away from “felony flats” which houses a lot of the prison population when they get out. There are several agencies near this neighborhood that can help address the needs of families including DHS (Department of Human Services) and a Youth Services Team with in the school to see to the needs of the students.

            Houck Middle School is in Southwest Salem behind a Winco (a low cost grocery store) and Shop-ko (a low cost department store) but has neighborhoods surrounding it on its other three sides.  Because this school has the highest poverty rate in the district, the neighborhood reflects it. The houses are middle class to some that are more run down. The main road running in front of the school has regular neighborhood traffic and a large percentage of the students that go to Houck walk to school.

            The community seems very friendly to me. I have gone into several of the stores in the neighborhood and have had very pleasant interactions.  All of the businesses within a couple miles of the school are all service oriented; grocery stores, restaurants and gas stations. 

Carlos Houck Middle School opened in 1995. Built for a capacity of 840 students it now overflows at just over 960 students.  Six portable classrooms were brought in to help meet the increased student population. In 2009 the staff to student ratio was at 1 to 16 and an average class size of 24-28; however with recent budget cuts and a reduction in staff and teachers, most class rooms now push the limits of seat availability at 34-39 students.

            Houck serves an ethnically diverse population with 72.6% of student population American Indian, Asian-Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic and Multi-racial.  The largest cultural student group is Hispanic.  Socio-economic challenges and frequently distressed family situations create instructional challenges in addressing student achievement and student subgroup achievement gaps. The poverty percentage continues to grow, now at a staggering 79.1% poverty rate within the families at Houck (82% of the student population is eligible for free or reduced lunch) and increasing number of Hispanic and English Language Learners.

            Since Houck entered Title I School Improvement status and developed a Restructure plan during the 2008-09 school years, considerable student achievement progress has been accomplished; however, there remains an achievement gap that continues to be the focus of this plan.  The improvement plan was put into place in 2009 and was created to carry the school through 2012 with adjustments as necessary.

            Within the school all of the staff is very busy with all the duties of the school, with the budget cuts this year they lost quite a few teachers and staff and are still offering the same services as before with more students. Despite how busy they all are, after spending some quality time in the school they were very friendly and welcoming. The teachers are similar; however I encountered quite a bit more stress and they are much more focused on their job than joining the community of the other teachers. One of the exceptions of that I have encountered is with the teachers I work with. They work in a “core” and talk to each other about their students when there are major problems with the students. They also do the parent/teacher/student conferences together which I thought was a great idea if only so that the students whose parents needed a translator did need to have to wait or arrange 5 different time slots. They were able to come in at one time and meet with all the teachers at once.

            This kind of environment threw me off at first. I have worked in a lot of jobs before beginning this program and I’ve never entered in a work environment in which the stress was immediately apparent.  I also haven’t ever worked in an environment where there was so little willing collaboration. Perhaps it was just because I was the new person in the building, but the only people I encountered who were pleasant and helpful was the special education teachers, and part-time staff. Even the substitute teachers when I met them (and I did have an opportunity to work with several) seemed more focused on what their next job was and not the class they were in that day.  Not knowing the school and politics any more deeply perhaps this was just a coincidence; however I can’t help feel that it was a product of the current climate of the teaching profession.  This makes me hyper aware of how I present myself and how this type of feeling by staff could possibly affect students.

The classroom I was in for my practicum was one of several computer labs within the school.  As you enter the classroom there are 22 computers situated on long tables that line two of the walls as well as an additional 12 computers on desks in a “T” shape in the middle of the room and two more on desks on the same wall as the white board. This white board takes up ¾ of the wall on the right side of the room.  The teacher’s desk is located at the “front” of the room which is also where you enter. There is a smart board and cupboards along the wall behind the teacher’s desk as well as a sink with a drinking fountain.

            When I first began my practicum there were no decorations on the walls. There were various signs scattered on the wall that mentioned computer safety and how to log on. By the time I ended my practicum my cooperating teacher had put up numerous posters showing families from around the world which showed them with all of their belongs in front of their houses. It was meant to depict how people from around the world accumulate “things.” He also put up a number of student products from a couple of the activities he had them do throughout the unit we co-taught on culture.

            When I first entered the classroom I thought it was very sterile and not a conducive classroom for creative thinking and learning, but by the end of my time there, with the art work and class work displayed around the room I thought it was much friendlier and student centered.

            I believe this set up influenced the way I created my lesson plans. I was constantly figuring out a way to bring in color and movement and interesting pieces to make the classroom livelier and engage my students. I think it is very important to make sure that students feel the classroom is partly theirs because they spend so much time in it.

I taught the 9^th period (directly after 2^nd lunch) 7^th grade social studies class.  I had 16 girls and 18 boys.  14 white, 16 Hispanic (of this 16, 13 have parents at home whose first language is not English and all correspondence must go home in Spanish), 1 American Indian, 1 Russian, 1 Filipino, and 1 Micronesian student.  There were 2 students with IEPs (one partially deaf, one behavioral) and 2 Level 1 ELLs as well as 9 transitioned ELLs and 6 who were level 3 ELLs.

             The students in my class got along very well. They sat next to at least one friend and were able to co-exist together very well. They even seemed to bond even more throughout the few weeks that I was with them despite not being able to move around much in the room. I believe that this was due in large part because in this school they were assigned a core group of teachers and had most of their classes together.  The Spanish speaking students tended to stick together and helped each other understand the lesson better by speaking to each other in Spanish when necessary.

            There as a tendency for the class to be apathetic to the lesson and to their grades. There were a large number of students failing the class because they were not turning in their homework. I think part of this was due to the fact that half the class had parents at home who first language is was not English and could not help them homework and/or they had to help with their families and didn’t have time to do homework.

            This was an entirely new setting for me, and I enjoyed the diversity immensely. Working in this classroom opened my eyes to just how important a multicultural education is and how important it is to have various techniques available for reaching each student. These students more than any other I have encountered at this point are juggling multiple challenges; poverty, language barriers, is two big ones on top of what all children of these ages are dealing with.

            I think that being in this king of classroom setting has shaped who I am as a teacher by providing me with an excellent experience. There were things I did well and things I can continue to improve on. I know that diversifying a lesson plan to meet the needs of each student is important but his gave me the opportunity to truly appreciate the challenge of doing it in practice.