Blog Entry 3

 
  • Describe a time your cooperative teacher has offered choice to students. 
             Ms. Mitari uses a lot of opportunities to provide choices for her students. When it comes to learning a topic, she allows the students to make choices if they want to group up with their peers. She takes this as an opportunity to gage the understanding of what the students know and what they don't. A lot of the times the students decide to do group work which  Ms. Mitari goes to each group and asks them questions regarding what they are learning. Another example of Ms. Mitari giving her student choices is the way they are allowed to spend their classroom points. 
           At the end of each week, her classroom collects points based on if they followed instructions correctly, completed a task, participated in the classroom, or any positive act that can be reinforced. She tallies these points at the corner of her white board, with each day having a collection of tally marks based on how well they did on that day. When it's the end of the week, they count up their tally marks and if they reached a certain number of points there class is allowed to have a certain amount of free time. The way they conduct their free time is chosen by the classroom with options such as art day, reading day, game day etc. For this week, since it was Valentines day coming up, the class had chosen art day so that they can have more time work on their Valentines Day goody bags. 
  • What does the cooperative teacher do to encourage a positive classroom community? 
            I am very much happy to say that Ms. Mitari has a wonderfully positive classroom community. When I walk in very time, the class greets me with so much excitement and joy that it surprises me that the students warmed up to me that quickly! I believe its because Ms Mitari instills respect and security with her students and that shows. On the first day that I was there, Ms. Mitari gave the class an opportunity to ask me questions about myself and about half the class rose their hands. Most of them were general questions but one that struck me the most was when one student had asked me about my pronouns. 
            The student was very respectful when asking, and when I told the class that I identified as he/him, we just moved on to the next question.  That exchange surprised me because in the past people have assumed that I identify differently (and they have made this known) but here are these kids who can grasp something with respect and normalcy which is often times hard for adults to understand. At the end of the class, I mentioned this to Ms. Mitari and she explained how she had two students within the classroom who identified as they/them. In order to provide an environment where the students felt safe, Ms. Mitari took this as an opportunity to educate her students with the notion that respect is what is most important for when it comes to interacting with people who may be different from you. 
  • What does the cooperative teacher do to establish a positive relationship with each student?  
            Ms. Mitari commits the time to get to know her students and she does this by being very receptive to the students situations that they may be dealing with outside of the classroom. She has a direct line of contact with the parent of each student within her class, this helps her because she is able to communicate with the parent about external factors that the student might be facing. Having that knowledge and baseline of communication helps her be sensitive if she is needing to approach a student for a one on one. If she notices a student acting differently she takes the time to address the student on a personal basis so that she may be able to get the student more engaged within the classroom. 
            One time Ms. Mitari had noticed a student completely shutdown after we stopped painting due to the fact that we needed to move on to her math lesson. While Ms. Mitari had given the class time for groupwork during this math lesson, she took the time to approach the student that had shutdown. Ms. Mitari had prior knowledge to what this student was dealing with and this gave her the patience that was needed to address this student who had not been participating in the class. The  students are very much used to group work and since Ms. Mitari taught the basis of that lesson she used the small amount of allotted time to talk to quietly to that student on a one on one basis. The student was able to get back to work and work within the group. Because Ms. Mitari is receptive to her students outside circumstances, she is able to create a positive relationship with each student because this shows that she cares about them. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog #6

  What areas of diversity do you see in your service-learning classroom and how is the teacher addressing them?   There are many different areas of diversity in which the Ms. Mitari addresses within her classroom. Some Aspects of diversity in this classroom are the students cultural backgrounds, learning styles and development. Ms. Mitari puts in alot of effort to ensure that she is a responsive and thorough teacher for when it comes to her students. During my observation in Ms. Mitari's classroom the students were very respectful among themselves and her as a teacher, regardless of whatever differences that they might have had.  Specific aspects of diversity within Ms Mitaris classroom fall into many different categories. While the majority of Ms. Mitaris students are white, there is still diversity within her classroom with students of varying cultural back grounds. About 7 out of 24 students have IEP plans where they have varying types of learning disabilities that has...
Read more

Blog #7

       When it comes to the standards and standardized testing, I was able to observe some of the impact it had made during my time observing Ms. Mitari's class. The way the class structured really showed how much emphasis the state feels what students are needing to learn more about by giving very specific time frames depending on the subject. For subjects such as math, science, writing, more time was allotted for these subjects with each subject having a 45 minute to 50 minute period. Other subjects such as social studies and art were given 25-30 minute time blocks. This structure of periods seemed odd to me as these were very specific set times for each subject that it seemed that Ms. Mitari was micro-managed by the state. I asked Ms. Mitari how she liked the structure of the class and she had expressed dislike with this way of scheduling as she truly felt like she was micro managed and never felt that she had had enough to cover each topic, or that she was scramb...
Read more

Blog #8

  Are you making connections between course topics and Service Learning?               Over the span of this course, I can say that I have made some key connections with the course topics and                service learning. With each course topic I have been able to apply the material within Ms. Mitari's classroom               and while I observed Ms. Mitari's classroom within the span of three weeks, I luckily wrote logged and wrote              down everything that occurred on a given day and was able to thoroughly backtrack and apply the course               topics to my service learning experience. Have you been able to articulate your own learning and understanding?                  At the beginning ...
Read more