Interview with Ms. A

Q: What do you see as Lucas's strengths?
A: He is really good at adding numbers and he knows good basic strategies for how to solve a problem.  He is also very intuitive about other's feelings and is honest with me about his own which is helpful.  I always know how he is feeling.

Q: What are some things he struggles with?
A: He has difficulty listening to directions, taking any redirection, and trying something if he does not initially know how to do it.  He also struggles with his self-confidence and his ability to stay on task.

Q: What are some methods that you have found that help him concentrate and focus more in class?
A: I have yet to find anything extremely successful.  I have tried to give him a stress ball to relieve energy, I provide preferential seating and seat him in the front, I have tried isolating him and seating him with all higher students.   I have also tried the rewards system.  None of these have given me very consistent results; one day it works and the next it does not.  I am thinking, however, to next try motivating him with technology because he really loves playing games on his phone and IPad.  We'll see if that gives any better result.

Q: Has his father or grandma given any suggestions that have been of any help on how to handle Lucas in class?
A: Nope, all they have said is to try to remain as positive as I can because he has a hard home life that does not include very many positive role models.  His grandma, the main care giver, does not know what motivates him either.  He is really passionate about hockey and loves to play, however, even taking hockey away does not help.

Q: How did you go about learning about Lucas's oppositional behavior disorder?  Did you do any research of your own or did he come with information?
A: He came with information, all of which was included in his IEP that I received from his case manager.  I usually take the information I am given with a grain of salt and I come to class having read the IEP but make my own assessment on the first day/ week to see what things students really do need to be accommodated on.

Q: How do you modify lesson plans to meet his strengths and weaknesses?
A: These students are all a part of my black class and our goal is to get them to grade level, so I do not really change the lesson itself but rather slow it down so that they have more time to understand the content.  I do, however, do more of environmental changes like turning off the lights, altering the seating arrangement, and incorporating intervention stations which work on strengthening basic skills.

An Ongoing Process...

Right now I have a couple things in the work that I will be able to add to my blog soon.  I have emailed Ms. A a list of questions to answer regarding having Lucas in her classroom.  They are:

1. What do you see as Lucas's strengths?
2. What are some things that Lucas struggles with?
3. What are some methods you have found that help him concentrate and focus more in class?
4. Has his family provided any suggestions for how to help engage Lucas in class?
5. How did you learn about Lucas's oppositional behavior disorder?  Did he come with some information or did you do a lot of research on your own?
6. How do you modify lesson plans to meet Lucas's strengths and weaknesses?

I have yet to hear back from Ms. A but when I do, I will be sure to post her responses.  I am also in the process of getting some of Lucas's class work.  Ms. A has taken a lot of their work home with her and did not have it for me to look at but she said that she would bring some this following week.  She did share with me his most recent test.  On the test he had written his name and then a question mark on every single problem.  There were no signs that he had attempted any problem.  I will have to ask her some more follow up questions on this to see how long he sat with the test before turning it in.  He may have at least thought about the problems before writing a question mark.  Ms. A also seems rather reluctant to share with me the actual IEP and behavioral documents for Lucas.  She does not want to get in trouble with sharing with me more than her administration would think appropriate, which I totally understand.  What she has verbally told me about Lucas's IEP and behavioral plan was included in the blog entry titled "Profile."

Review Game Success

One day I was observing, Ms. A had the students take part in a review game.  The game was based off of escape rooms that can be found all around Denver.  In an escape room, you have one hour to complete a certain task and in order to complete it, you must use the clues that can be found within a room.  When you go into the room, you are allowed to tear the place apart searching for clues.  Although the students were not going to be tearing the room apart, they were solving clues (math problems) to get pieces of a puzzle that they had to solve as their ticket out of class.  Lucas's involvement in the game was as follows: 

The third class of students are Ms. A’s block students.  These kids have been put in this class because they did not meet seventh grade math standards for the beginning of the year; they need extra help in the subject to fill some of the gaps they have.  Ms. A welcomed the students and told them about her experience in escape rooms just as she told the other classes.  When she began to explain the instructions, Ms. A took a little bit more time and even asked the students to repeat back to her what she had said.  (OC: Several of the students in this class have behavioral issues, so it is imperative that she sets the expectations for them very clearly.  She needs them to understand not just hear the directions before she turns them loose to show what they know.)  In his group, Lucas was the runner.  As soon as the role of the runner was explained to the class, Lucas was whispering to his group, “I call being the runner.”  (OC: This role seems to be very attractive to those who like to get up and move around the room, like Lucas does.)  Lucas was one of the students who was running, not just walking, around the room to get the clues and find the problems.  He was asking his group what they thought the answer was before they could even begin solving the problem.  He was writing in his notepad while sticking his tongue out.  (OC: A sign of concentration I have found.)  He was encouraging his team members saying, “Hurry,” “How are you guys doing,” “Let’s go, we only have one more to go.”  (OC: This made me smile.  Lucas was so invested in finishing the puzzle.)  After class I expressed this to Ms. A and she told me that Lucas loves puzzles.  He loves putting together the pieces and seeing what can be made so it was no surprise that he was enjoying this game.  (OC: This made me think that on some level she was doing this game to reach the kids who do learn in a different way, who like puzzles and like to get up and run around the room. As a teacher, it is important to know and figure out how your students learn best early on so that you can teach to those strengths.)

During third hour, before the game had finished, Lucas’s group was the closest group all day to finishing the puzzle.  They were on the last clue and moments later a second group was also on their last clue.  (OC: Although part of this is due to the fact that Lucas and his group were working so hard, being a part of the block hour, they had two class periods to complete what the other two classes had to finish in one.)  When the second group went to the front of the room to get their final clue, Lucas called out, “No! Are you guys on the last clue? Come on guys, we need to hurry!”  (OC: The competition was one of the aspects that motivated Lucas.)  During the second hour of the class, Ms. A was going to give the students time to start their test.  Right after the bell, I thought she was going to call everyone to clean up the game and pass out the test.  This did not happen, however, she continued to walk around the room and help students with review problems.  She smiled at Lucas when he came up for his last problem and encouraged him to keep working after the second group got their final clue as well.  (OC: Ms. A was holding off on starting the test so that Lucas and his group could finish the entire activity.  One key aspect of getting students to work hard and do their best, is getting them to feel successful.  If a child is constantly failing, the motivation to try harder will never develop.  Ms. A was holding off on starting the test so that Lucas could finish the game and feel a sense of accomplishment by solving the puzzle and being the first group all day to finish.)

I was so excited to see Lucas's excitement and interest in the activity.  I think that incorporating more games into the class would be very beneficial for Lucas as he was not only engrossed in the lesson for one day, but I think he also learned something about himself and his abilities.  

Interview With Lucas

On October 8th, I interviewed Lucas.  I decided to ask Lucas a few questions that would hopefully start to help me understand Lucas's learning preferences.  How he felt that he liked to learn best.  The following is a script of our conversation and my feelings as we talked.

I pulled him aside during enrichment and asked Lucas a series of five questions.  When Ms. A asked Lucas to come and talk with me, he said, “Okay, I guess.”  He was reading at the time.  (OC: Lucas loves to read and so pulling him out when he is doing something he loves made him not so excited to talk to me.)  I asked Lucas whether he wanted to go in the hall to answer the questions or find a quiet area in the room.  He said, “I don’t care.”  So we walked to an empty table in the classroom that was separated from everyone else.  After we sat down, I prefaced the interview with, “Hi Lucas, so I am going to ask you a few questions about school but if you ever feel like you do not want to answer a question, just say pass, okay?”  (OC: I did not want Lucas to feel pressured to answer something he was uncomfortable with.  If something was too personal for him, I wanted him to feel like he had an easy way to “get out.”)  He said, “Okay,” and we began. 

I proceeded to ask the first question, “What do you like about school.”  Lucas replied, “Nothing.”  (OC: This took me by surprise.  I was not expecting him to say that he liked nothing.  I thought he would say he liked gym class or he liked being with his friends, but not nothing.)  I stumbled over my next words as I was thinking how to proceed and what questions would still be relevant.  I decided to just go as originally planned.  “Nothing, why?” I asked.  Lucas thought for a moment and then said, “Because it is all too hard.”  I nodded my head and jotted his answers down in my notebook.  “Now, what do you not like about school?”  (OC: I felt like I knew what his answer was going to be.  If he just said that he liked nothing, he was probably going to say that he did not like everything.  I was right.)  “Everything,” Lucas stated.  (OC: At this point, I was beginning to feel really bad for Lucas.  To think that there was absolutely nothing about school that he liked made me sad.  It made me feel a sense of helplessness.)  I asked Lucas why this was and he replied with the exact same answer as before, “Because it is all too hard.” 

Continuing with my interview, I asked Lucas the next question, “How do you think you learn best?”  He replied rather quickly, “I do not know.”  I wanted to be able to ask Lucas a follow up question on this like why don’t you know, get him to actually stop and think about how he learns, but I could not think that quickly on my feet.  (OC: The next question I had been planning on asking was, “Do any of your teachers do this for you?”  But I felt that since he did not know how he best learned, this question was irrelevant.  If you do not know how you learn best, how would you know if this is happening in a class?)  From there I jumped to asking Lucas, “Do you think you would be more willing to do something if you were given options or just told one thing to do?”  Immediately after I asked the question, Lucas stated, “Yea, options are better.”  (OC: Not only did his answer match up with what my prediction was but his enthusiasm for the answer made me believe that he really felt that options were better.)  The final question I asked Lucas was, “Does anyone at home help you with your homework?”  Lucas said, “Yes, my grandma.”  I thanked Lucas for his time and he walked back to his desk to read.

Before the interview, I assumed that options do help Lucas learn, that having more possibilities helps him to feel like he is in control of something.  But the interview helped me to solidify this theory.  Lucas stated himself that he feels he would learn better with more options rather than just being told one thing to do.  I do, however, still want to figure out a way that I can test this theory.  I feel bad for Lucas.  Lucas saying that he does not like one thing about school because it is all too hard for him indicates that he feels disappointed and frustrated with himself.  He feels like a failure because he has not had any success.  In my special education class, we talk about how students with disabilities, like Lucas, often experience a lot of failure in the classroom and this contributes to their self-image.  For Lucas to already feel like he cannot do anything in school just shows how much he feels defeated.  Feeling such defeat will make it really hard for Lucas to succeed in the classroom.

Observation Notebook

The observations I have made during my internship time thus far have been mostly discussed in the above questions numbers two and three.  Here, however, are a few pictures of my observation notebook. 

Deciding on Lucas and My Goals for Observation

Ms. A's third hour class is a block class, meaning that she has the same twelve students for two class periods.  Of these twelve students, nine of them have IEPs in place.  In choosing who I was going to observe, I asked my CT if she had any suggestions.  She was the one who suggested Lucas to me.  I began to take note of what Lucas was doing more carefully and realized that he was always doing something.  He was chatting with a friend, fiddling with something new, or exploring a new area of the classroom.  I found him intriguing and wanted to learn more about why he did what he did what he did.  

From Lucas, I hope to learn better how to handle a student that has a behavioral disorder.  My goal is to observe how Ms. A explores new ways to try to reel him into the class discussions and see what techniques work and what does not work so well.  My hope is that by the end of this semester, I will know I would handle and build a successful working relationship with a student with a behavioral disorder.

First Interaction With Lucas...

I have yet to interview Lucas one on one, however, I would like to take this opportunity to share an interesting interaction I had with Lucas and what I learned from that experience.

The bell rang; it was the start of third hour.  The students had come into the class one by one during passing period.  Each time a student entered, Ms. A greeting them with, “Hi!”  Most students responded, “Hi,” back to her as well.  (OC: I really like that she greets each student.  I think that this makes for a very warm and welcoming environment where the students know that they are cared about.)  After the final bell, Ms. A and I walked into the classroom and Ms. A immediately started class.  She stated “Good morning kids! How are you all?”  There were some scattered replies but the students remained rather quiet.  (OC: The students seemed more tired and unmotivated than they had the two weeks before.)  She told them that she had to meet with a couple groups yet to help them with ideas that they were struggling on, so to get with their groups and start an activity as she pulled each team.  As Ms. A was explaining this, Lucas was sitting on top of the grouping of tables behind his assigned seat and was kicking another student, Dean’s, chair.  He was looking at his cellphone and chewing a large piece of gum.  (OC: He really did not seem interested in anything that Ms. A had to say, but, not only was he distracting himself, he was also distracting Dean.)  He eventually moved back over to his table when he and his table mates began to engage in a conversation.  They debated whether “cooking crack” was the right way to say it or whether it was “making crack.”  (OC: I really found this topic of conversation to be weird and worried where they had heard about crack in the first place.)  Ms. A walked over to the table of boys and encouraged them to get a move on finding their groups.  It took a while for the kids to figure out who was in their group.  Lucas stated “Go away!” to Dean.  (OC: They obviously were not a part of the same group.)  Lucas asked Dean, “Where’s your group?”  Dean replied, “I do not know, magic.”  Both boys giggled and Dean walked away to find his group members.

Lucas’s group consisted of Bobby and Mary.  When they joined him at his table, Lucas began to poke Mary in the ribs.  Bobby joined in on the poking.  Mary asked the boys, “Why do you do this?”  The boys replied in unison, “Because I can.”  She rolled her eyes and said, “Is it because I’m not mean to you guys?”  Bobby said, “No, it’s because it’s a free country!”  Over by where they were choosing their activity that they would be doing for the next thirty minutes, there was a large group of students chatting.  Lucas went to get the activity for their table and on his way back was bouncing a bag of cubes in his hands.  When he sat down, Mary began to read the directions.  Lucas opened the bag of cubes and stated that he was going to have a war.  Bobby said, “Oooo!  Me too,” and they both began collecting cubes of the same color to form their army.  At this point, I asked to join their table and partake in the game.  They all said I could.  Mary passed the directions to me and said, “I don’t understand the questions.”  I asked Bobby if he would like to read the directions aloud.  He did.  After we all listened to him and Lucas multi-tasked, listened and set up his army, the students began choosing a color for their game piece.  Mary chose blue, Bobby chose yellow, and Lucas chose red.  I added that I would be playing with magenta.

Lucas was the first to go.  He rolled the dice and moved his game piece.  He then had to solve the division problem on the square he rolled to.  He wrote down the problem and then just sat there.  I turned to him and asked, “How many times does two go into one?”  He stated, “One time.” I said, “No…”  He then replied zero.  Lucas made no eye contact with me.  He was looking at Bobby and giggling.  I then asked, “How many times does two go into fourteen?”  He replied five.  After multiple tries, he still was not getting the correct answer.  So, I started from two times one and asked him to keep multiplying the numbers until he reached fourteen.  He was then able to say that two goes into fourteen seven times.  Mary rolled the dice and was able to solve her problem successfully by herself.  Bobby rolled as well and got the same problem as Lucas.  He asked to roll again.  I told him he could so he could have a new problem to solve.  Bobby was able to solve his new problem without writing out the long division.  He asked, “Do I have to write down the problem?”  I told him he should so that he could practice dividing numbers.  (OC: One of the goals of the week was to be able to strengthen their long division skills.  I had thought to myself that if I just let him solve it in his head, he would not be practicing how to divide numbers.  He would need to practice these easy ones to make the more challenging problems easy as well.) 

Then, it was Lucas’s turn again.  (OC: I went through pretty much the exact same process each time trying to help him solve the problem, however, each time he focused less and less.  I feel that this was probably a reaction to him feeling more and more like he was unable to do the problem as the numbers got larger.)  Lucas kept saying, “I don’t know,” “I am not good at this,” “I don’t know how to do long division.”  He made less eye contact and kept looking at what Bobby and Mary were doing, asking, “Whose turn is it?”  (OC: Lucas was getting frustrated.  As the problems got harder, he got more and more aggravated and shied away from trying to solve the problems.  He not only got flustered himself but was becoming defiant.  As I was asking questions, he would completely ignore me and instead look around the room.)  Lucas then took Mary’s pencil so she took his.  (OC: I felt that Mary’s reaction was a pretty normal kid thing to do.  An eye for an eye kind of mentality.)  She asked him several times for his pencil back but he was reluctant. 

As Lucas and I were trying to solve one of the problems, he began to throw the cubes at Bobby and Mary, yelling, “WAR!”  I said, “Lucas, let’s try to concentrate on this problem, can you focus your eyes on me?”  He proceeded to throw the cubes and even began throwing anything that was on the table.  He said, “Nothing is allowed on the table.”  (OC: At this point, I was really trying to keep my cool.  I was getting aggravated by his lack of concentration and motivation.)  I said, “Lucas, stop.  We need to solve this problem.  How many times does thirty go into one hundred and fifty?”  He focused enough to say three times.  I said, “Alright, let’s try to multiply out thirty times three.”  (OC: I knew that that was not the answer, but I wanted to see if he could figure out that that was the wrong answer.)  He multiplied it out and found that it equaled ninety.  I asked if he could get in another thirty before he reached one hundred and fifty.  He said yes and said that thirty goes into one hundred and fifty four times which equals one hundred twenty.  I said, “Okay, now do your subtraction, one fifty minus one twenty.”  (OC: I again knew that you could fit in another thirty, but I wanted him to discover this.  Not only this but to realize that each time you subtract, you are checking your work.  If you do the subtraction and it is still bigger than the number you are dividing by, you can put another one into your original number.  I felt it would be a good learning process for him.)  He realized his mistake and went back to the top of the bracket to change four to five.  Meanwhile, Mary and Bobby had both finished their division problems and were waiting for Lucas to start the turn after this one.  I told the table that we should change the rules to the game.  Whenever you finish a problem, just roll for your next turn and it will be more like a race to the end.  (OC: I did this to try to motivate Lucas.  He was in the lead but his peers could quickly catch up.  If he did not focus and really try to solve these problems, he could easily fall out of the lead.  Plus, the other students needed something to do to keep from distracting Lucas.)  About five minutes later, Ms. A said that we should stop what we were doing and move back to our seats. 

I told the students that we needed to clean up, there were cubes all over the floor.  Mary, Bobby and Lucas helped me to pick up the floor.  As we were cleaning, we found that Lucas’s pencil had been broken during war.  Since the pencil at that time had been in the possession of Mary, she said sorry.  (OC: She felt really bad about his pencil, I am sure thinking that she would get into trouble for it.)  She made a deal with Lucas.  If he gave back her pencil, she would give him a brand new yellow pencil with a new eraser.  He took the offer and they switched pencils on the way back to their seats.  I took a deep breath on the way back to mine.  (OC: It was draining trying to constantly redirect and focus Lucas.) 

After the class was over, Ms. A and I were discussing Lucas’s behavior.  She was explaining to me that she did not know how to handle Lucas.  When the class was later splitting into pairs to work on a problem plan, she had asked him to move over to another table with her and another student who also tended to need some extra help.  He had felt that she was singling him out and became upset.  She told me, he had cussed at her saying, “I am not going to do that damn work!” and he refused to do any more work during class.  I also shared with her my experience with Lucas and how he had been so distracted and unmotivated at attempting the division problems.  Ms. A says that she has tried everything with him.  She has tried cracking down on him and telling him what to do.  This has only led to him pulling away and behaving even more defiantly.   She has also tried to give him options and choices, however, this has only led to him taking advantage of the freedom and making bad decisions.

 I worry about what to do with such students when I become a teacher.  I know that it takes time to figure out strategies that work with each student, whether that is positive reinforcement, taking away recess time or etc.  Is there, however, a strategy that makes this process easier/shorter?  I also worry about my ability to balance these students and supporting their needs with the rest of the class.  If I had not been there when war was breaking out during intervention stations, I wonder how Ms. A would have handled the situation.  Would she have even noticed what was happening or would she have been working too in depth with her group that she would forget to look up to the rest of the class?  When a student is being disruptive, and you are the only one there, what is the appropriate move for the student?  These are all questions that I need to talk with my CT about. 

While I was working with Lucas, Bobby and Mary at intervention stations, I noticed a couple things, first, the social dynamic.  Lucas seemed to be kind of the “ring leader” for the bad behavior.  He was the one would start poking Mary first and then Bobby would follow.  He was the one who started throwing the cubes and then Bobby would follow.  There was a social order, and in this case, Lucas was of “higher status,” and Bobby, in an attempt to fit in, did whatever Lucas did.  At this age, kids are really just trying to blend in.  They are going through an awkward time of changes both physically and mentally, and self-confidence is greatly established through the acceptance of their peers.  They are doing whatever they can to make themselves look “cool” and relate to the other students. 

I also noticed that there was a variation in the ability level of the students and I wonder how deliberate this mix was.  As the daughter of a teacher, I know that, often times, teachers pair high students with a lower student so that they can help tutor them.  The high student also benefits from getting the opportunity to learn the material better by teaching it to someone else.  In this group, both Bobby and Mary were able to solve the division problems successfully without help, while Lucas was not.  If I had not been there, I wonder if Bobby and Mary would have been willing and able to help Lucas solve the problems.

The Location

Carmody Middle School is located on Kipling Street right off of Jewell Avenue.  Right near the school are two parks that each have small bodies of water: Kendrick Lake Park and Carmody Park.  The area is a suburban neighborhood with many houses and some nice open spaces close.  When I first walked up to the school, the first thing I noticed was the large rectangular arch way.  (O.C. The sharpness of the arch really is very powerful and bold looking.  The arch instilled a sense of confidence in me.  I thought, yea, that’s right, I am going into this solid and durable building because I am strong.)  All of the doors were locked when I first walked up, so I had to ring the intercom on the side of the building.  Most schools have those now and keep the doors fairly securely locked during the day as a safety precaution.  Upon walking in the building, I immediately noticed the carpet.  All the hallways had grey carpet with teal and maroon stripes in various hallways.  I later learned that hallways with teal stripes were seventh grade hallways and hallways with maroon were eighth grade hallways. 

Walking through the hallways was confusing to say the least.  I still do not quite understand the layout of the building.  It is kind of like a big grid, however, then there is a large wing that spans out from one side in an ‘L’ shape and I am not sure how that works with the rest of the building.  I did my best to only go up and down one staircase so that I would not get too lost on the first day.  The lunchroom was smaller than I would normally predict a middle school lunchroom to be.  There were only about ten tables in total in the entire lunchroom that fit about twelve to fifteen students each.  Knowing this, it makes sense why they have to split the students into four groups for going to lunch; there is simply not enough room for them all to eat lunch together.  In the staircase that I used most frequently, there was a hand-carved sign that read, “Carmody.”  It was a really nice and large piece of wood that was varnished beautifully as well.  On the second floor, by all of the classrooms, there were lockers in all the hallways.  The lockers were painted a royal blue and were half lockers.  They seemed to be well kept up with a fresh coat of paint and, from what I saw, the locks looked in good condition as well.  (O.C. At my middle and high school, this was not the case.  The paint on all the lockers was chipping and the locks were so difficult to turn, it sometimes took two hands.  Each year you had to re-figure out your locker and learn its tricks for getting it opened.)   

When I went outside to help Ms. A with before school duty, I noticed the large fields around the school.  They have two large fields which looked, to me, like they could be used for soccer and football.  One of them was surrounded by a gravel track.  There are several outdoor basketball courts and lots of grass and trees around the school as well.  It was rainy this morning, however, if it had been a nice day, I think that the outside area would have been a wonderful area for students to hang out before and after school.  (O.C. I am a very outdoorsy person, so having that space where I could maybe even take the kids to have an outdoor lesson would be something I would look for in a school.) 

Ms. A’s room was cold.  (O.C. I do not think I ever said this about my middle school classrooms because we had no air conditioning.)  When I opened the door to her classroom, there was a waft of cold air each time.  Next Thursday I must remember to wear more layers.  Ms. A had her tables set up in pods of four.  (O.C. I had never seen this type of formation with desks where the chair is attached to it, however, it seemed to work well for her and her students.)  She had her desk centered at the front of the room with her projector and document camera sitting right next to her.  She had an expo board also available to her to the right of the smart board.  On one of the side walls was another expo board that she used to write down her objectives for the day and mini-math assignments.  Mini-math assignments are much like a student’s warm-up that gets their mind focused and thinking about math.  On this wall and part of her front wall, there were also large posters that had the different ideas the students would be learning during that week.  Ms. A explained to me that she made these posters so that at the end of each chapter the students would know what they were supposed to know how to do for the tests.  She was going to keep up these posters for the entire chapter and keep adding new ones.  (O.C. I think that this is a really unique idea because it helps the students to visualize how much they have learned.  They can be proud of themselves as the room fills with posters of items that they know how to do.)  On the other side wall, Ms. A had a large bulletin board that was empty as of today.  She said that she would eventually be moving the posters of all of the topics they were covering over there, however, she was waiting until she got out another poster.  (O.C. This is the only thing in her classroom, physically, that I would change.  I would, personally, prefer to have all of my boards at least somewhat set and decorated so that they did not look so empty.)  The back wall of the classroom was lined with windows and did not have much wall space, however, there were multiple cabinets lined up in that space between the windows.  These were used to store the students’ notebooks and other materials for class. 

In the classroom there was also four computers. They were not used at all today, however, I did overhear her speaking with one of her colleagues about how they should introduce the students to the new games that they had on the computers.  (O.C. With our changing and developing world, keeping students involved and in touch with technology is extremely important.  We, as educators, must help connect computers/the internet to our lessons and introduce them to positive resources that they offer.) 

On the walls, Ms. A had several posters.  She had a poster of her expectations for all of her classes.  It read, “1. Try! 2. Respect other people and their ideas. 3. No talking while others are talking.”  (O.C. These are all fairly straightforward ideas, however, it is important to lay them out for the students right from the start and then have them there for them to refer to if need be.)  She also had a really funny poster that said “Math Chivalry” and depicted an addition symbol opening the door for a division symbol, a squared symbol, and a set of parenthesis.  (O.C. I really enjoyed this poster and I think that having this poster in the class, something that maybe the students do not understand right off the bat, and then being able to show them why it is funny using the knowledge that they learned would be really satisfying for them.)

One thing that I do wish there was more of was more color in the hallways.  I remember at my middle and high schools, there were constantly posters on the walls that students made that advertised upcoming events and teachers would often hang classwork up outside the classrooms as well.  It is only the second week of school, so this type of stuff may still be coming.  There were also no murals that I saw, no art at all hardly, except for the wood carving.  Even though the school was nice and it seemed well taken care of and new, I would have liked to see more school spirit in the halls. 

After reflecting on what I saw today, there are a couple overall descriptive words that come to mind.  First, I think homey.  The carpet being in the entire building, including the hallways but not including the cafeteria, made for a really warm sensation even though the air conditioning was cold.  It made me feel as though I could take my shoes off and relax.  Also, I found that her having handmade the majority of her decorations and posters also contributed to this feeling.  It was easy to tell that she cared about her job and the students because she put so much effort into each thing that was on the wall.  A school being able to give this feeling to students, I think, is a good thing.  The students are able to feel more comfortable there and it makes for a more relaxed and peaceful atmosphere to learn in. 

I also thought that her desk/ room arrangement was conducive to how she ran class.  Ms. A, throughout the entire day, was constantly telling kids to turn to their partners or share and work with their group on a problem.  Having the desks set up in pods made it easy for the students to go back and forth between individual work and group work without having to constantly get up and move their desks in order to work with others.  The emphasis in the classes was collaboration and building a sense of community by working together and the desk arrangement helped to strengthen this tie.  

When I am at Carmody, I take on a very large observer role.  I sit at my own desk a lot and listen to Ms. A much like another student.  I also, however, circulate the room often while the students are working in groups or independently.  I ask students if they have any questions and the students are beginning to feel more and more comfortable asking me to help them when they need it as well.  To the students, I have become much like another teacher or tutor.  For Lucas, a student who has an oppositional behavior disorder, this can be detrimental to our relationship.  He does not respond well to people of authority and it is going to take a lot more effort from both sides for us to build a relationship of trust and respect.  

Carmody Middle School is a rather diverse community.  According to Jefferson County Public Schools' website, 60.4% of the students are white, 31.5% are Hispanic, 2.9% are multiracial, 2.4% are Asian, and 1.4% are Black.  I personally believe that the more diversity a school has, the better learning experience a student will have.  Hopefully, Lucas will be able to use this as an opportunity to learn more about race, culture, and ethnicity.

Here are some pictures of the classroom and posters hanging on Ms. A's wall: