Contextual Factors: Community, School, Classroom & Students
The details of factors influencing the area and classroom in which I will be performing my student teaching are described below.
Community
S-town is roughly a 45-minute drive from downtown Salem. According to a report published by Portland State University (2008), its current population is an estimated 6000 inhabitants. According to the census taken in 2000, its demographic makeup consists of roughly 87% White, 8% Hispanic, 0.3% African American, 4.5% Native American, and .2% of another, unspecified ethnicity. Since the community is largely racially homogenous, using a Multicultural Education approach will be a key element of crafting lesson plans. Of course, it's important to try to connect one's ethnic students to the curriculum, but in places where students receive no intercultural exposure, purposefully exposing them to other cultures becomes even more important.
S-town appears to, in general, consist of mostly people on the lower economic spectrum. The area directly surrounding the school bears evidence of this. Butting up against the school grounds to one side of the school is a lumber mill of some type, and an apparently considerably older one at that. In front of the school, along the street on the far side of the school, is a row of older houses. The house directly facing the school is older and is cluttered by various knickknacks. The family in that home is fairly large. I rarely see less than 4 people outside the house at any time imbibing beverages of an adult nature. Either they are independently wealthy and care not to show it, or few of them are currently in possession of full-time employment. It would seem that the majority of their day consists of fixing/improving one of the many vehicles of which they are in possession. This can actually be distracting in the classroom should they decide to work on a vehicle’s horn in the middle of a test, which has happened.
However, S-school being what it is, not all the students come from the immediate surrounding area. While there are 2 students there who qualify for reduced price lunch, the students who do attend are typically students whose parents have set them on a track to university, which means that they tend to be from families that have at least a modicum of expendable income. Therefore, while I have to take care not to assume that students have too much experience with matters that would require means, I can’t imagine that the community directly surrounding the school will influence my teaching to a great extent.
School
According to the National Center for Education Statistics website (2008), S-school has a student population consisting of roughly 81% White, 7% Asian, 7% Hispanic, 4% African American, and 1% American Indian students. There are 31 male students and 48 female students at the school. It takes students from grade 4 through 12 and currently has 14 4th graders, 15 5th graders, 14 6th graders, 13 7th graders, 4 8th graders, 7 9th graders, 8 10th graders, 4 11th graders, and 1 12th grader. 11 of its students are eligible for free lunch and 2 are eligible for reduced price lunch. Only 3 of its students are on Individual Education Plans. It has a student teacher ratio of 26.7/1. This information is slightly dated, but while the student numbers are a little off, the percentages remain largely accurate.
The school consists of 5 classrooms, a commons/cafeteria area, a gymnasium, and a computer lab, which branches off the gym. There is an upstairs area which houses the teachers meeting/break room and a storage area. Behind the school, one can find a field used for soccer and other outside sports/meeting activities. The grounds are not extensive nor the facilities luxurious, but one never feels without and the quarters have a “homey” feeling about them which is overall pleasant. The library of the building is actually a series of bookshelves which surround the outside wall of the commons area. That image fits for the rest of the rooms in the school in general. The school is somewhat cluttered, but having been to quite a few schools and other places in Japan, I can say that the school fits its theme in that regard expertly.
The principal of the school is a fairly young woman. She has only within the last 3 years received her licensure for school administration and in that time, has turned the school into a well-oiled machine. I could see evidence of her leadership from the first day that I stepped into the school. She seems quite determined and a skilled administrator despite her lack of long years in an administrative role. The staff of the school is young in general. While a few of the teachers are under the age of 40, the support staff and many of the other teachers are older. Despite the large schism in the age demographics of the school, the school has a very young spirit, making it a vibrant and energetic place to learn. It seems like a place where teachers and students alike are mentally and emotionally flexible and are neither hesitant of nor resistant to change. This will influence my teaching in 2 ways. Firstly, there is very likely a reason that all the teachers are young. Probably, they are young because it would be difficult to keep experienced teachers in an environment where you’re paying salaries with 80% of the funding of a public school. I’m inclined to think that most people, if given a job there, move on before too long. Students will certainly need a stable adult role model to help them focus on their studies.
Classroom
Since my mentor teacher teaches both math and science classes, the walls of the classroom that I will teach in have an odd, but pleasant, mixture of paraphernalia from Japan as well as science and math subject posters. There are 2 whiteboards at the front of the room (with a projector) and a cupboard full of chemicals and other necessities at the rear of the room, which are separated by a series of tables the students use as shared learning spaces during class time.
The fact that there are tables and not desks will impact my teaching in a number of ways. While desks aren’t a “must have” for successful classroom instruction, though they would be better to have in a classroom built around Wong’s Rules and Procedures as I would like to do in the future. The fact that students don’t have desks will necessitate my keeping in mind that the students don’t have a storage area, either in their desks or below their desks, to place their items. Thus, if students bring more than their textbook, paper, writing implements, and/or calculators, there will be a certain amount of clutter on the floor, which will limit my movement and proximity to the students. Any issues of reduced proximity to the students will, according to Kounin, be the source of behavior issues.
There are 2 doors in the classroom. One of the doors is the main entrance and opens into the school’s commons area. The second door is on the back wall and is occasionally used as an exit. Anyone exiting from this door would not be able to re-enter the school without going around to the school’s main entrance.
From my observations, I’ve found that my mentor teacher doesn’t use the walls dynamically in her classroom. She sometimes puts students work up on the walls, but they are not constantly changing and she tends to not use them as a learning space with vocabulary posters or any other similar learning device. That will influence my teaching in that I would like to—time permitting—to use the walls as a source for potential learning.
Students
In the classroom that I will be teaching, there are 11 students. All of the students are of Caucasian ancestry. The students seem to get along pretty well. However, there are clear groups within the class. Two of the students are dating and always sit together. After having a conversation with my mentor teacher about the pair, it seems that letting them sit together is a good idea and I agree. One of the students is prone to driving the lesson off topic through outbursts in class. The other student in the pair is a very intelligent and focused young person. As it works out the one helps the other to focus on the tasks at hand and as a pair work better together than the one would individually. Both of the students grades are above average and thus, I am disinclined this moment to separate them. However, I will need to make sure that this situation continues. Should the relationship become a hindrance to the progression of either student or the class in general, I will have to separate the pair. Another pair, not dating, but flirtatious with each other regardless, are seated next to each other across the room from the above-mentioned pair. One of the two students in question is also prone to outbursts in class and attention seeking which can be distracting to the progress of the class. Currently, I am taking steps to reduce outbursts by only legitimizing comments from students who have raised their hands while punishing continued outbursts using the school’s behavior modification system. The other student in the pair, doesn’t have an outburst problem, but the student has a very bad attitude in class. This particular problem is neither a distraction to me nor the class since the student tends to keep to themselves, but should that situation change, I will have to have a conference with both of them to address the reasons they are having difficulty behaving in class. I am less inclined to separate these students currently because their grades are good. Their behavior issues are manageable, but I’d rather not risk alienation and possible resentment issues by forcing a seating change unless it were absolutely necessary. Such a move could jeopardize their success in the class.
Since the school streams classes by ability level and not age, it will not be necessary to adapt lesson plans for TAG student needs. Additionally, since there are no students in the class on an IEP, and only 3 in the entire school, it will also be unnecessary to make adaptations for IEP considerations. However, were there any TAG students, I would prepare additional practice that required higher level thought for TAG students who were able to quickly finish class work. Conversely, I would have made adaptations to assignment length, difficulty, or due dates of assignments as necessary based on IEP stipulations.
Many theorists, such as Piaget, have tried to delineate the process of acquisition of cognitive abilities on a timeline starting with birth and ending with adulthood. While such lists may be true in a general sense, the basic fact of the matter is that all people are different and grow at differing rates. The unique rate at which children grow can be attributed to genetic causes, environmental causes or both. Regardless of the source of the problem, the result is that there are students who don’t fit into the curriculum mold. Those students will need specialized help in either moving into a higher order of thinking or in maximizing their potential within a threshold dictated by a disability. For example, a child that will never progress mentally beyond the age of 2 years old will need to be stimulated within that threshold. According to Piaget, that would mean the child would need sensorimotor stimulation.
In the classroom of my student teaching placement there are no students with special needs nor are there any ELL students. However, were I to have any students with special needs, I would make modifications to the assignments to ensure the student’s success as per the requirements in their IEP. Were I to have any ELL students, I would be sure to use simple language during direct instruction and in directions on written assignments. Additionally, were I to have an ELL student, I would be sure to use SIOP strategies, such as vocabulary posters, group composition exercises, and other methodologies as necessary to scaffold the student’s access to content knowledge presented in English.
There are also presently no students with issues that could be classified as locomotive impairments or with blindness. However, should I ever have a student who was physically impaired in a future mathematics class, I would make sure that the student had access to every part of the room from a wheelchair. I would space the desks so that the student could easily make their way through the rows. I would make sure that all obstructions were moved away from the storage areas, bookshelves, and paths to the door. Were I to ever have a blind student, I feel it would be necessary to have a specialist assist me in teaching the student how to write special mathematical symbols or in how to use a computer to do so, since I’ve received no special training towards those ends.
With such an environment of welcome and consideration, not only would we be providing for our students the best education they can get, maximizing their potential of success, but we would also be showing them how to be caring persons that can then help others in turn. With this goal of not just educating, but of educating a citizen who is concerned and caring of the troubles of others, we ensure the future for all.
Literacy is the ability of a person to understand what is going on in the world around them. Literacy is crucial for people to be able to decode the words on signs that they see around town, to glean information from a pamphlet, or to enjoy a book. Conversely, writing allows us to judge whether or not understanding has taken place and to what depth understanding has been assimilated. Without the ability to write, some people would be without a means of communication entirely, while others use writing to shape the world around them, for example, by writing a persuasive letter to a congressperson. But these are not the only forms of literacy. There are a plethora of skills that people use daily that are part of the decoding of the world around them that include neither reading nor writing. An example of that can be seen with gestures common to a culture. What is a sign meaning “peace” in America can be taken as a rude gesture in other parts of the world. This is a form of cultural literacy. People use literacy skills to decode the innumerable signals they receive from the world around them every day. As educators, we must prepare our students to be able to successfully decode those signals and construct understanding before they can be expected to take their place in society and even before we can expect them to make the most possible out of their classroom experience.
The integration of literacy into the content area of mathematics is especially important. Perhaps the study of no other school subject impacts potential success in the amount of top tier careers as mathematics. Mathematics is a critical skill for a wide variety of professionals including teachers, doctors—who use it in the study of chemistry—and engineers—who use it in everything from designing load-bearing walls to calculating the most efficient speed for the operation of industrial machinery. Additionally, it is common for reports, research, and/or dissertations to be written using mathematical language. In order to be able to read and obtain a minimal level of understanding, it is crucial that one be able to read and write about mathematics. The use of special symbols, which hold greater meaning, is very common in mathematical writing. In order to be able to decode that information—which often has a large part in continuing education—one must be able to understand the meaning of said technical writing, or at least be able to pinpoint sections where understanding fails; as opposed to failing in understanding in a general sense. I intend to develop this ability to encode and decode the technical writing as used in mathematics and thusly support student learning and understanding in a number of ways. In the following section, I will detail two of the techniques I intend to use.
First, having students read and write at all strengthens their overall ability, “Practice makes perfect” as the old adage says. During my student teaching work sample, I will be teaching a unit on linear systems of equations. It will be necessary for students to be able to describe what a linear system of equations is and they will have to be able to do so using their own words. It will also be necessary for them to describe the traits of graphs or what a solution they’ve found means within the context of a word problem rather than just returning a raw number. In order to succeed, the students will have to be able to perform the encoding of this information in written English such that it is possible for me to decode their intended meaning and judge for correctness.
This activity is good for literacy learning, because it allows students to draw connections between the technical language used in talking about mathematics and written English and, in the process, strengthens the mental pathways used for both the language of English and the language of mathematics. This improves the productivity of any future use of said pathways. In order to help the students in that process, I intend to engage the students in written summation. This is an activity where students use writing to summarize what they’ve learned from a past lesson either as a means of warming up for a coming lesson which simultaneously pulls the relevant mental files to the forefront of their minds or as a way of summarizing what they’ve learned from a lesson that is about to finish in which they prove ownership of the content by phrasing learning in their own words. This demonstrates the students’ ability to use English to describe the level of internalization from a lesson they had the day before.
Second, I intend to use the DRTA literacy teaching technique in order to improve student access to text written using the language of mathematics. Especially at lower ability and comfort levels, students, when presented with a wall of text with a heavy use of symbols, panic even if the text uses only information they’ve already studied. This symbology can strike them immediately as insurmountable and without scaffolding can leave them with a high affective filter through which new information will have a greater difficulty passing. I intend to use DRTA to help them overcome that initial feeling of ineptitude and begin to draw valuable information out of the text. The goal of this activity will be to help the students come to a place where they are able to answer simple questions about smaller portions of the text that they may begin to understand the larger text. I intend to do this as bellwork (unassessed work students do at their desks after they come into class but before and just after the bell rings to help them focus on the coming class).
To use the DRTA process with a bellwork style assignment I will have copies of the unit on the students’ desks, or I will have them open their textbooks to a certain page, as they enter the classroom. On the overhead or Smartboard, I will have questions written and direct them to write their answers in full sentences in their math journals. Examples of questions I will ask might include, “What do you think this lesson is about?” or “What do you think you will learn during this unit?” The assignment will be unassessed, but saying that I’m going to collect the papers lets the students know that I am taking the assignment seriously and that they should as well. This activity will not only offer the students additional practice writing in English, but will also offer practice in using the DRTA process to access written texts, giving the students the opportunity to strengthen mental pathways connected to reading, reading technical language, and writing in English and mathematics.
Whether it is reading to practice the decoding of information specific to mathematics or to practice the more complex process of encoding in technical language, literacy is critical for both English and mathematics. It is therefore essential that any math class involve the development of literacy and it is my intent to offer students the chance to excel at both, putting them in an optimal position for success.
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