A New Expierence

Urban schools are a lot different than  expected. I expected to enter a school where the majority of students were African-American and the violence was out of control even though I was placed in an elementary school in fourth grade at Richmond Elementary. I was not sure the children would respond to me and simply see me as an outsider. None of this was true. The majority of my students are white, violence is not completely out of control, and the students are very accepting. Something that I did was follow the advice of Dr. Staples and went in with a clear mind. I was very excited when two of the behavioral troubled students responded to the talks that I had with them and were relatively behaved. One of these students was taken out my the police officer the day before and sent home. I am constantly asking my teacher what she does with the different challenges that I notice. A lot of the times the best thing the teachers can do is to ignore them. After many different attempts to talk to and help a student they must move on and wait for something more drastic to happen or for a behavior specialist to come help. I was completely shocked to find out that writing a referral for a student often does not have an effect because the office does not look at them. I believe this is part of being in a large school district. When you have so much to do you only have time to deal with the most dramatic issues.

One of the students questioned my , which I found to be interesting. When discussing this with my host teacher she told me that these children are very interested, they do not just settle for considering me to be white. They want to know where my ancestors are from,  Italy. She originally guessed that I was Russian, then Puerto Rican, and last Polish. She guessed these three ethnicities because those  along with African-American are the dominate ethnicities of their school, so that is what they know.

These children really just want someone to care and they want to learn, just like we read in the article by Corbett and Wilson. They ask me many questions both about the school subjects and about me and where I am from. This is proven to me over and over again when either my host teacher or myself talk to a kid who is not on task and then they often get right to work and become passionate about their work, particularly writing. When asking my host teacher what she does about students who act up or are having what she does for the most part positive reinforcement is the answer and this may sound corny but it was kind of like magic to see it happen right before my eyes.

Before this experience I knew a lot about schools meeting AYP, but it is totally different in urban schools. When attending a grade team meeting I learned that because the number of African-American students was not that high their individual performance on standardized tests was much more crucial. If there is the slightest gap in achievement levels among races AYP becomes much more difficult to reach. I watched as these teachers tried to come up with solutions to help close the gap. They struggled because they were doing the same exact things with those students as all of the other students in their class. If you click the first AYP I have provided a link to inform you about what AYP is.

I was shocked with how our speaker told us to deal with students when you give them problems. I knew that you could not show them your fear, but I did not understand the lengths you must go to in order to do that. I do not think I would have ever told a student that could potentially be larger and stronger than me to go ahead and hit me or get in their face just like they did to me. I guess over time I would learn that that was necessary but it came as a complete shock to me.

After learning so much in the last two days I can not imagine how much more I will learn over this next week.

Hope everyone is having a great time,