#5: History of Education

In my service learning classroom, I saw students who appeared to be from different ethnic backgrounds, which comes from Brown v. Board of Education. One thing that actually bothered me a bit is that I saw one student, who I'll call Jake (that's not his real name), who was having a lot of trouble focusing, following instructions, and sitting still. My brother has severe ADHD that he's learned to manage, but in elementary school, he acted a lot like Jake. I'm definitely not qualified to diagnose him, but if I were his teacher, I would've recommended that he be evaluated. Under IDEA and section 504, he could've gotten help to learn how to manage it, as well as things like extra time on assignments, individual instruction, and even counseling. They also learned about science, which comes from Sputnik making science more of a priority in schools.

From the research I've done on No Child Left Behind, it was actually replaced by the Every Child Succeeds Act in 2015. This law moves to give education to the states, rather than the federal government. It also gets rid of an accountability system that punished states with underperforming students. However, it keeps standardized testing in place. 

#4: Engaged Learning

My cooperating teacher engages her students pretty well. One activity involved play-doh. She had the kids make letters out of play-doh, then had them form words with the letters, similarly to the video we watched where the kids had letters on little pieces of paper.
Another activity she did was a "guess what number I'm thinking of" game while they were waiting in line to leave for lunch. She gave them clues like "it's an even number, it's greater than 100, the number in the 100s place is a 2," etc.
A third activity she did was on the class iPads. The students went to a website called Prodigy, where they can play math games.

One activity she does that didn't engage the students as much as it could've was a worksheet on grammar and spelling. She could have made it into a game where the first person to find all the mistakes in the sentence wins.

Entry #3

Describe a time your cooperative teacher has offered choice to students.  

He has explained to the students that after their assignment is done, and after they finish any current and missing work, they can choose to read, draw, write a story, or play a math game on the computers if they're available. 

What clear routines are established in the classroom?  How do they support a productive learning environment?

When they first come into the classroom in the morning, they're supposed to sit down, take out their math supplies, and quietly listen as he starts the math lesson. This routine allows them to immediately start learning, rather than having to wait for everyone to get their materials out and quiet down. 

What does the cooperative teacher do to encourage a positive classroom community?  

His number one rule is to be respectful. This rule might not work as well in a very young classroom, but in a 5th-grade classroom, it works really well. 

He also asks the students to "popcorn", or raise their hand and quickly put it back down, to check understanding. This helps him check understanding without other students having a chance to look around and see how many hands are raised and feel bad for not understanding. It also prevents students from seeing a specific other student's hand not raised and making them feel bad about it.  

His other rule is "hands and feet to ourselves". He explained to me that some students, especially boys, will roughhouse with their friends and accidentally hurt them, hurting their feelings and their friendship in the process. Having the rule to not touch each other helps that to not happen. 

About the School

The school that I'm doing my service learning at is Traverse Mountain Elementary. It's located in Lehi. On the outside, it looks like a lot of other elementary schools, but as I walked inside, I noticed that the gym is on a lower level that can be seen from the hall, which I thought was interesting. The surrounding neighborhood is made up of upper middle class homes. It's really close to the Traverse Mountain Outlets.
I'll be working with a class of 29 second graders. I'll likely be helping out in the early afternoon.
My understanding of service learning is that it's a good opportunity to serve the community, while also learning more about teaching in the real world. I get to help a teacher and see what teaching is all about and whether or not I like it.