CHES

4/2/13

3/20/13

Elementary School 1 

3/19/13

Ms. R 11th grade American History

Mr. T 10th grade English

Today Ms. R seems a little more stern than usual. While she is still joking around and not being “mean” in any way, she raises her voice to get the students attention at the beginning of class and tells them to put their “lids down” (referring to their laptops). She begins reviewing what the class accomplished yesterday, and shows a list on the smartboard comparing individual needs/interests in the environment versus business needs/interests in the environment. She says, “I feel like you guys didn’t get the most out of that activity, so we are going to try something else. I’m giving you three prompts: “I notice..” “I wonder..” and “What if?” and you have to look at this chart and fill in those sentences. So for example, I went to New York this weekend, and I noticed that M&Ms sold in Times Square were more expensive than those sold in the regular stores at home. I wondered why they would charge more and if other people noticed this price change. What if they donated the difference in that cost to a charity or non-profit organization?”

Field Notes- 3/1/13 

Cross-Visit

Today I went joined Jomaira at Stonewood High School. She is working this semester with the Mayor’s new college access initiative, and is gathering information about various schools in the city and their college programs. She tells me that they are looking for a neighborhood school in a low-income community with high college access rates, but that has been hard to find. So far she has noticed that many of the college programs are separate or extra features of the school, but they are not implicit in the curriculum or culture. Additionally, Jomaira tells me that some schools have multiple programs that overlap or do not communicate with one another, because they have grants or funding coming from a variety of sources.

We enter the massive doors to Stonewood High School and there is only about foot between us a metal detector. We put our bags through and sign in with the security officer. The building is classic and beautiful inside, and clearly has history. We are told to go up to the Student Success Center to meet with Alisha, the manager of the center. We walk into the center, which is also a computer lab. I notice a few students waiting to use the computers. Alisha takes us to a separate office to talk. I typed up the main points of our conversation in bullet point form because I talked about them more in depth in my cross-visit paper (and I also did field notes for my placement this same week so these were a little more brief).

How is the notion of some students as "bad apples" (from chapter 6 of Whatever It Takes) resonant -- or not -- in your field setting?  Who gets categorized in this way, and by whom? what are the "criteria" for this kind of label, or to put it another way, what are students labeled this way like?  how they treated? If this "bad apples" idea is NOT relevant to your setting, consider why not -- and what that might suggest about what's happening there.  Finally, you could consider these questions on a specific, classroom- or school-based level or more systemically, depending on your site.

Field Notes: March 5^th, 2013 

I haven’t really noticed the “bad apple” theme come up in my field placement. However, I think the lack of clear “bad apples” says something about student-teacher relationships at my school and the type of learning environment there, although some might argue that it also is reflective of my school’s highly selective student body. I’m interested in talking about this issue more with others in my group and in class, but my field notes this week touch on a wide variety of issues that came up this week for me. 

3/6/13 

• How is the notion of some students as "bad apples" (from chapter 6 of Whatever It Takes) resonant -- or not -- in your field setting?  Who gets categorized in this way, and by whom? what are the "criteria" for this kind of label, or to put it another way, what are students labeled this way like? how they treated?
• If this "bad apples" idea is NOT relevant to your setting, consider why not -- and what that might suggest about what's happening there.

This question is very interesting to think about in regards to my field placement. At both the Elementary Schools I am placed at, I am in a small pull-out class with anywhere from 1 to 10 students. These students come from many different backgrounds and cultures, and they also speak different languages. Until receiving this prompt, I never thought about “Bad Apples.” In my classes, each of the students is pretty well behaved. To me, a bad apple is a student who acts out often. He or she is identifiable by the rest of the students and the teacher- all would agree that the student has behavioral problems. At my placement, however, this is not the case.

     Why doesn’t my placement have a bad apple, or even more than one bad apple? Small class size might have something to do with it. Often times, and in my experience, students act out to get attention. In a class that is small and sometimes has more than one teacher (when I’m there), each student gets more attention than they do in their normal classroom.

02/15/13

Field Post #6

Notes for Feb. Friday 15^th, 2013:

Today the students and the teachers where recovering from the previous testing. They ended up working on a worksheet for fun and then went on to watch a movie that had to do with the stories they had just read for Black history month…

02/21/13

Field Post #7

Notes for Feb. Thursday 21^th, 2013:

Today was more of a relaxed day. They played a fact or opinion game with the smart board. They did reading with their teacher on their text books. They did a worksheet that went with their textbook. They then worked on another worksheet that they have to complete at home that is due tomorrow(Friday). From my previous experience I ended up asking the teacher about if she allowed her students to speak Spanish or English only. She responded that for those who didn’t know an English they can speak Spanish but for those who know some English they can only speak English.

02/22/13

Field Post #8

Notes for Feb. Friday 22^nd, 2013:

2/26/13

Elementary School 2

I decided to use McEntee’s Guided Invidual Reflection Protocol (pg. 52) again this week, as I want to expand on one particular story.

February 26th, 2013

Ms. R 11th Grade American History
Mr. T 10th Grade English

Today was a fun day in my field placement because Sarah came with me for our cross-visit! We talked a lot about some issues I’ve been thinking about and she brought to my mind some things I hadn’t thought of before.

As usual, the students in Ms. R’s American History class were working on their big “benchmark project.” I learned that each quarter there is a benchmark project, with a clear grading rubric. There are multiple parts to this project. Last week the students researched the causes of the Great Depression and studied the New Deal. This week they are researching the causes of the Great Recession. The final project will be a comparison of the responses to the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Ms. R has almost the identical assignment as last week, with 3 sources and guided questions. She only says a few words at the beginning of class and then tells them to start working. Sarah and I are walking around looking at their visual depictions of their projects from last week and they are clearly excited to “show off” their work and explain it to us.