Monday, January 5, 2009

First Day Impressions....

We arrived at Rock Point early yesterday evening and got set up. I won’t go into lots of details from yesterday because I feel like today’s events are a little more pertinent to this blog. We woke up at six something, braved the curtain-less showers, and walked outside to the main building of the school around 7:45am. We had a list of teachers that had communicated to Carol that they’d be willing to have us in their classrooms, so Mark walked us to their rooms, introduced us, and left us each in a different classroom. I was placed in a reading classroom for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. The school uses a program called Read 180, which is made by Scholastic. The teacher I was observing has the students work in two of three stations each day: computer, table, and reading. The computer station has six computers equipped with headphones. The students use the Read 180 software to do a variety of tasks: read a passage aloud into a microphone, type out words that the computer audibly dictates, correct misspellings in a passage, etc. I noticed that all the students were pretty self-motivated and engaged when working on the computer. The reading station is pretty self-explanatory; students read silently and choose their texts from a classroom library that is organized by skill level. The table station varied a little bit between the grade levels but essentially consisted of a reading passage that the students would read aloud in a circle (one paragraph per student) focusing on specified keywords. I talked with Emily about the program, as she was already familiar with it, and she felt pretty strongly against it. Her main reason is the same one that I found immediately apparent today: lack of real interaction between students or between teacher and student. I’m still curious about how effective the program is otherwise in boosting reading levels, developing vocabulary, improving spelling skills, etc.

Emily, Robin, and I talked a lot about the atmosphere in the classrooms that we observed: how the students acted (toward each other, toward the teacher, and toward us), how the teachers received us, how classroom management was handled, etc. We seem to have noticed a pattern that should maybe be attributed to cultural differences and not our individual teachers. It seemed like classroom management was not a huge problem but, at least the impression I got, was that it was due to the students non-tendency to take advantage of their teachers rather than the teachers’ strict enforcement of rules. My teacher seemed to use eye-contact in the way that we use proximity. She didn’t need to move closer to the students, verbally acknowledge their behavior, or even glare at them. Rather, a few glances in their direction, as a way of saying “yes, I see what you are doing,” seemed sufficient and effective.

I was only really introduced and involved in the classroom during one period. Accordingly, those students were really friends and said hello to me. During the other classes, I felt really invisible. I thought it was odd that, though I got a few curious glances when the students first walked in, they completely forgot I was there afterwards. Granted, they didn’t know who I was or why I was there. But other in other instances of observing classrooms (and in my own memories from high school), unexplained guests usually get quick glances from students throughout the period.

I’m hoping to be more involved tomorrow. We haven’t decided if we’ll be in the same classrooms all week or rotate to see a larger variety of things. Either way, I think I’ll spend at least one more day in the classroom that I was in today. I reiterated to the teacher that I’d love to be involved but also don’t want to be burdensome to her in any way (I do NOT want to come off as pushy in her classroom) and, though she was hesitant, she mentioned some one-on-one or small-group tutoring possibilities. We will see.

I have lots more to say but am exhausted and will leave more for tomorrow’s post. I am REALLY looking forward to the basketball game tomorrow. I hear they have fry bread there, which I have yet to try and really is an essential Navajo experience. Can’t wait.

I’m also hoping for some productivity tonight, since I spent a lazy evening last night watching Wall-E and looking at Adam’s wonderful photography of our trip thus far.

Miss you, Illinois world. Not too much though. 

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