I was placed in South Side elementary for my field experience. When I entered the school, kids were just coming out of their lunch time. The kids were trying to make a line to go to their classrooms in an organized manner, and most teachers were yelling "Get in here!", "Stay in line!". I heard this from the inside of the office in which I was waiting to see where my placement teacher was. I was placed with Ms. Rodriguez, who teaches math and science in a rotating class.
The math class has a 40 minute duration. For that day's class, they had to write a long assignment for the next day and go over a test review. The teacher started copying the assignment quickly, most of the kids fell behind because of how long it was, and there was a part in which they had to copy seven sentences, five times each. Then, the teacher gave out the test review which she went through rapidly and they were making at the same time. In my opinion, there was not a lot of time organization in the class. Forty minutes is not a lot, but the kids should be learning things accurately rather than speedily. When the switch came, there were about five students who had not finished copying the homework, but the teacher made them go to their next class.
The students for science class came in, and they had a quiz so I didn't see much teaching in that class. They had had a homework for they day before, which they could take out for the quiz. Some of them didn't do the homework, so the teacher told them that they were probably going to fail while she gave cookies to the ones who did the homework.
I think that the experience you had was very normal, but obviously not in a good way. When the goal of education is to do well on national tests, teachers tend to set their goals to speedily going over material just to finish it, other than actually making sure the students are learning accurately, which will therefore increase the possibility that the students will do better on tests anyways.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of the science class, I believe that what the teacher could have done was just let the kids who had done their homework use it for the quiz, but that those who hadn't done it didn't get singled out and put down. The cookies though, I thought was a good idea because it reinforces the positive behavior.
I agree with Amanda's comment that in today's high stakes testing environment teachers are too prone to teach to the test and not to the students. As future educators your first priority must always be with the needs of your students. Having all students copy from the board without regard to accommodating for special needs or learning styles is not only a waste of time but grossly counter productive. Since this is an elementary class, part of education in this setting involves making students responsible for their own learning but as we know there are many other ways that the teacher could have completed the objective without antagonizing the kids who had not done the homework or those who had not finished copying down assignments from the board. We will discuss those in class tomorrow.
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