Week 3

    Week 3 started off with no school since it was Martin Luther King Jr. day. As a class we went over quite a lot of information to prepare for MLK day which was beneficial for the students I think because surprisingly our students really did not know much about the holiday at all. Even more surprising to me was that even though our class is very diverse, very few, if any, of the students understood what it meant to have a different skin color than someone else or what being treated differently because of skin color looked like.
   The rest of this week went well overall, the days seem to go by very quickly which is something that surprised me at first, but something that is definitely a good thing as well. Throughout the week I was able to teach the R.A.P. class period which is just the time each day where the entire school is supposed to be reading so I have been reading a book to the students and asking them questions as they read, currently we are reading "Runaway Ralph" which is definitely above the reading level of my students, but I would say that they still definitely enjoy it. Tuesday, Mrs. Greene was also able to observe me teaching a lesson for this class period. I would definitely say that it went well, the students seemed engaged and she also had some good comments for me relating to my teaching.
    Tuesday after school I was also able to go to a meeting of all of the teachers and support staff for the whole Developmental Learning Program. This meeting encompasses teachers from three separate buildings, all whom are apart of the DLP. Of the 50-60 teachers and therapists who were at the meeting I was the only male which I found humorous. It seems that the ratio of guys to girls from my education classes carries over to the working world as well! The purpose of the meeting was to learn about a new assessment which is supposedly supposed to take over in place of the IAA, the Illinois Alternative Assessment. It was an interesting video but what is really cool is that my school is one of the few piloting this new assessment before it is used next year or at the latest in a few years. The DLP regularly pilots new assessments and methods so this is something that is really exciting to be able to see and to observe happening in the classroom. The teachers weren't overly excited by some parts of the new assessment which has a few names but I know it as KITE. We will be learning more about the new assessment this coming week at another staff meeting.
    I feel that in the classroom I have been slowly gaining more respect with the other teachers and staff as well as with the students, it seems to be a slow process at times but it is definitely improving as more students feel comfortable with my presence in the classroom, but more importantly as they learn to listen to what I have to say and to follow my instructions. I think that taking over all discipline in the classroom may be a bit of a difficult task as my teacher has a very certain discipline style which is not similar to the management style that I use, so that may be a rough transition depending on how the students react to my management style.
    Later in the week, I was able to teach a full reading lesson as my teacher had to run out to her daughter's school to drop off medicine, this went well and it was really enjoyable to teach in front of the whole class (4 kids). The more I teach the more I am more comfortable in the classroom and with the kids, which is of course understandable but still something that I think that I should state. I was also able to work with a math small group for part of the time in math class. The classes get split up by ability level for reading and math. The group that my teacher and I have is one of the lowest achieving ability groups for math so teaching them is sometimes a practice based in much patience. The students have a very hard time remembering from day to day what we learned and progress is very slow. We have been working on distinguishing the differences between numbers and number words for two weeks already, with small amounts of progress in most of the students. A few of the students have made progress though and are doing well, I was able to work on reviewing some material with these students on Thursday. Another interesting aspect of the DLP is that if one teacher goes home sick or needs to leave for a bit (like bringing their child medicine), the other teachers are really great at taking the other teacher's students for a while. For example on Friday, a teacher went home sick so her class came with ours and we did our afternoon activities. This meant that we had around 16 kids in our classroom along with 5-6 aides, which made for a crazy room and a crazy afternoon!

Classroom Confidential

1.  I think that my understanding of culture was enhanced through the reading of Schmidt. My class is one of much diversity, no two students come from similar backgrounds and for only having eight students we have students from many different backgrounds. I think I big part of this is because the co-op services 9 districts, but anyways, looking at my students through their cultural backgrounds is important and I think that I have learned a lot about them and their cultures, just through their actions, what they say, what they know, and their interests. It is very interesting to see where these students have come from and how different many of these backgrounds are from my own. For example, one students' mother recently lost her job and the teachers were worried that the student would not have food for awhile since the mother is the only source of income in the household. This is a fairly common problem in this school, but a problem that I never thought about back in my school or in the area of my hometown. So looking at this culture gives me a whole new perspective on where my students are coming from and what they are going through as well.