Sheridan

I did my practicum in Sheridan Japanese School (SJS) in Sheridan, Oregon in the Fall of 2011. The following is the description of the community of Sheridan, SJS and the classroom I was in.

Class Characteristics

The number of the students in the class is ten. Seven of them are female and three are male. Their ages range from eleven to thirteen. There is no student with special needs. There is no ESOL student. The parents of one male student are Latino, but he grew up as a native speaker of English. One girl has a Japanese father and a White American mother, and she also grew up as a native speaker of English. The level of the students is high for their ages. There is no TAG student, but no parents claim for TAG because the teacher teaches advanced content to the whole class.

Impacts

One of the issues that I may face will be lack of resources at the school. Since the school is a charter school, it gets only 85% of district funding of a regular public school although it earns “outstanding” achievement. The business in the city is very slow, and the school cannot expect much financial supports from the local people either. As a result, the school does not have many resources, which may bring limitations to a variety of my lesson plans. The computer room is used as a study hall classroom, and use of computers in regular lessons may not be applicable. There is no Smart Board, and I cannot use good programs it offers. There is no over-head projector, and I only can use my computer in the classroom.

Another issue may be gaps in motivations and achievements among students. Because the school was founded by people who wanted to provide children with academically challenging education, parents’ expectations are very high.  On the other hand, some students attend the school just because it is located in their neighborhood and the school has a good reputation. Neither they nor their parents may have much motivation or expectations for higher academic achievements, and they more likely need extra help outside the class. Because there is no college in the city, it is hard to get any college volunteers to tutors for them. There is no extra teacher or room to support them either. Although the school offers after-school tutoring 4pm and 6 pm from Mondays through Thursdays, the students who need it often cannot afford the costs.

I think cooperative learning best fits in my class of students who have different levels of learning abilities with limited outside support and resources. According to Slavin (1991), cooperative learning mutually benefits students with different levels of ability when students have group goals and work with individual accountability. Thanks to the feature of the school community, class members already have established foundations of cooperatively working skills. I will make sure each member is responsible not only for learning but also helping classmates learn. I want them gain from each other’s efforts and we want all congratulate each member on his accomplishment.