Field Hours

Day 1, Block 1, Math, Third and Fourth graders:

I notice that right away Ellie begins to make a game rather than working on her assignment. The teachers back is turned while she enters attendance in the computer. Class did not start on time it was fifteen minutes late to start with. Lenny is doing a lot of erasing and laying his head down and generally not on task while Paul gets his first assignment done and moves on to practice problems while the rest of the class finishes their work. Ellie wanders when asked to get a new piece of paper for her practice problems. She often looked on the verge of tears and did not talk as much as the other girls if at all. In two hours I saw her talk to other students only a few times. Paul has already finished his practice problems and has moved on, he then seemed to get bored and started playing with his shoes. It is twenty minutes into class and Lenny is still not done with the first assignment and Ellie is back to making her game rather than doing her work. At this point I have yet to see the teacher do a whole lot of anything with the students. They are making multiplication charts so the making of them becomes automatic for the TAKS test. There is a line at the teachers desk for help and Ellie should be next, but several other girls cut in line and she lets them without saying a word. I notice the teacher is gentle with all of the girls but Ellie touching, hugging a nicer tone of voice, but always keep space between herself and Ellie. Paul is having many successes today, has gotten all of the harder problems assigned correct. Lenny is still working on the chart after fifty-five minutes, he is less interested than he was at the beginning of class.

For the entire class period of two hours I see the teacher provide no instruction to these students. She has given them rote work and worksheet packets to complete or correct. I am not impressed by her. I would not run my room as she runs hers. She never got out of her seat, never checked on Lenny, or any of the students. I would have walked around among the students once I got my attendance done so I could spot those who really were having more trouble as well as I think it helps keep students focused and motivated if they see the teacher is walking among them and helping them where they need help.

At snack time I notice that Ellie and Paul kind of hang out together. This is the first time I see her talking to a student. There is so much noise I can't tell who is saying what, but they are talking.

Bock 2 Reading: Ellie and Paul leave, only Lenny stays for reading. Given practice TAKS, flips through it, lays head down, kicks feet and plays with a pencil for nearly ten minutes before looking at his practice TAKS again, then plays with something in his lap. The teacher sits by him, says nothing just begins grading papers and Lenny gets right on task. The teacher is split between two rooms and must go check on the students in the other room, while she is doing this Lenny goes right back off task. When she returns he is still playing with something in his lap and she asks him if he would like to see the principal he says no and gets back on task. I was asked to go to the other room and read the questions to the students in there (on their IEP's). All students in this group are dyslexic and quite sharp and answer the questions once they are read to them with no problem. All of them make a passing grade on it. Lenny is on task when I return to the room.

The room is very cold, all of the children are shivering. I suspect this is not a good environment for learning. Teacher says that this is as warm as she can make it. I wonder if towels could be put in the vent to take some of the chill off and promote better learning.

Lenny seams to be much more on task now and works slow, but steady. He misses most of the answers and makes corrections. During free time Lenny interacts with the other boys quite a bit, laughing and making fun of the girls.

All in all the students throughout the day have interacted with each other often and do not seem hostile toward each other or aggressive. While this group has its share of problems they all come across as good kids.

My biggest problem was with the apparent lack of instruction, both in math and in reading. I would not run my class like this at all. I understand that there will likely be times when I need to step out of the room, however it appeared to me that the lack of instruction particularly in math was less than the best the students should have been given. I wonder if this is how these teacher always work.

I understand making the multiplication chart automatic is important for these students to be able to pass the TAKS test, but it could have been done in a different more engaging way. They could have split up and raced boys against girls or third against fourth and which ever group all finished first could have done something on the board as a reward. Another possibility to make the chart making more interesting would have been to have them make their charts on the boards. Of course this would mean more work for the teacher, but the kids would get more out of it I think.

Day 2, Block 1, Reading 5th grade:
This is a more severe group. Lester has ADHD and is medicated. As class begins students are given a short time to do some free reading and check out books. Lester has a book that he flips through looking at the pictures for about one or two minutes, perhaps getting an idea what the story might be about. He goes back to the front of the book and begins to read. As he gets several pages in I notice he goes back and re-reads a page or two. This is a good strategy that he has either been taught or developed himself because once he does this something in the story suddenly makes sense to him, the "click" can be seen on his face and he laughs out loud. Lester has a hard time getting on task. After thirty minutes he still has not read the one page passage. He spends an enormous amount of time sharpening his pencil, popping his neck and getting drinks, he looks frustrated. He is the last to finish his work and misses more than half the questions.

Peter has LD and a behavior disorder. According to the teacher he was very angry at the beginning of summer school, she suspects it may have had to do with his older sister being an over achiever and his younger brother being in a GT program while he is in resource. Peter finished his practice TAKS test, made a good grade, and went to reading his x-men book. He interacts well with most students, he shows the girl in front of him a picture in his book and says "Good God" and goes right back to reading. The teacher provides praise when she grades his test and he giggles and seems very happy and proud about his success. During snack time he eats his snack and competes with another boy as to who can draw a video game character better. They ask other students to judge which is better and all of them choose Peters picture, and I have to admit it was a phenomenal drawing.

Eric has asbergers, but is friendly and on task, nobody is really sure why he is in summer school. He scores well on all of his practice TAKS tests, interacts appropriately with other students most of the time, sometimes has a bit of trouble reading social queues, but that is to be expected. For example another students ruffled his hair (a girl) and he took it as rough housing rather than flirting and tried to ruffle her hair that was pulled up in a pony tail. He did move around in his seat a good bit, but was never noisy during reading time.

I did not think that the teacher noticed all that was going on in the classroom. She spent more time than I would have in the hall talking to other teachers. It appears to be common practice for the teachers to leave the student to their own devices. I did like that during snack time she had conversations with them. They talked about pets, and siblings, and what they thought they might do that afternoon. I did not see any accommodations during this class. I think that assigned seating might have been beneficial in that as students completed their work they got a bit chatty and since they were sitting close to others it was easy to be chatty, had they been set with a seat between each student I think they would have disturbed the slower students less. I also would have taken an interest in what was going on with Lester and his lack of even turning a page after so many other students were done.

Block 2, Math:
The teacher is not even in the room and the class is out of control, she comes in and says "turn around and get busy" and leaves again. None of the students I had been watching are in this class, I am waiting for the teacher to come in and point out other diagnosed children. It took her over fifteen minutes to come into the class. In the mean time all of the students went wild, and who could blame them. When she comes in not much changes for several minutes.

Mike has ADHD and dyslexia. He is surprisingly on task, but as he works he wiggles and plays with other things. He never stops working for more than a few seconds. He gets his work completed and plays while he waits for others to finish.

Cory has ADHD and giggles almost constantly, is very off task and takes much prodding to get him to complete the assignment.

This is the first time I see any instruction given these students. The teacher works with them on the overhead on word problems and long division. I like her instruction on how to find pertinent information in the word problems. She asks questions and draws pictures. The students find the answers and most of them readily participate. One problem with several extraneous facts in it throw the children off so she spends more time on it trying to get them to find what is important and eventually they do. When she is providing instruction she does a bang up job. I would have provided more oversight in the beginning of class as I feel that would have made it a more productive class. The students get into a name calling match targeting race during that fifteen minutes she was out of class. This is the worst interaction I have seen among the students, up to this point they had fair interactions with each other. I'm sure that this lead to less productivity overall.

On the third day no much occurred it was Friday and again no instruction was provided to the third and fourth graders. They did rote work and once they finished they were allowed to just play. I felt this was a waste of time and an easy way out for the teacher who admitted to me that she was burnt out. I felt this really put the children at a disadvantage.

I would say the main thing I learned from this experience was that if you are going to be a lazy teacher find a different field to go into as you are doing a disservice to your students. I would like to think that I will put much effort into my instructional strategies and the delivery of them. I also plan to be a teacher that can see what is going on in my room and don't plan on being out of the classroom. I understand that on occasion I might have to speak with someone in the hall for a moment, but I would make it wait until I at least got the students going on their assignment. I felt sorry for these students and hope that the teachers give more instruction during the regular school year.