While in route to the school, i took a good look at the area that I was in. Garbage filled the streets, old cars and small houses filled the streets. I could obviously tell by the surroundings that this wasnt a good area and I knew my time at Asa Messer would be interesting.
Just by the outside, i could tell the school is small. The main doors have wire over the windows, which made me nervous. Walking in, the hallways were flooded with children(in a very unorganized way, very different then when I was in elementary school). The classrooms are tiny. The hallways are dark and the doors leading to the classrooms are thick, dark brown wooden doors, with no windows. This seemed strange to me.
Tuesday was my second time at Asa Messer, but my first "real" day working with the children. I arrived, picked up my first graders folders and activities that we were going to be using that day, and went to the kindergarden room to observe for the first hour.
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Your classroom and school is very much like mine, all of the teachers are mostly white and female while the children are mostly black and spanish. I also have one girl who does not listen at all and is constantly getting out of her seat...my teacher told me to be strict with her and to use the feathers (feathers are used as money for the kids at the school store) as an incentive for her to behave.
ReplyDeleteIn research that I completed for a Women Studies class last semester, most teachers are female. In my research I found that many men lack the compassion and nurturing skills to teach unless it is at a higher level, or they work in school administration. I also found that the majority of school administrators are male. This information was shocking, yet interesting. It sounds as if you have a very diverse group of students and teachers alike, I would be interested to see how the teachers work together in regards to Delpits article, can they communicate on the same level?
ReplyDeleteThese comments are great. I like Kayla's input about the little girl and the feather idea!
ReplyDeleteBarry, this is very accurate commenting about the gender stratification in education. I would like t hear more about what people think about how "men lack the compassion and nurturing skills," is this natural or constructed?
I know exactly how you feel about the little boy who is very distracted. I have a girl who is in Kindergarten and it is very difficult to keep her attention on the work. She is always looking around and then she wants to tell me all about her life. What I do is when she tells me a story I choose a specific word out of her sentence and have her tell me the sounds of that word and then what letters make those sounds. I don't want to tell her to stop talking since that helps in the learning process but it is very difficult to get through the curriculum with her and the other students so I try my best to relate what she tells me to what we are learning.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Barry's blog and professor Mattiauda's blog, I dont think that men lack the ability to be nuturing and caring around small children I just think that for most it does not come as second nature as it does to women. However, I know that there are some women who are absolutely uncomfortable with small/ young children and would rather not be arounds them. I think that it just depends on the person and their comfortability level around young children as well as their experience that they have had with them in the past. My elementry school is just like this as well, now that I think of it, I do not believe that I have seen a male teacher at all.
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