An Observation

Well this Monday we finally got set out on a trip to the elementary school. All I can say is this “man time flies.” I felt like we did not spend enough time in the class.

The teacher it seemed gave off a sense that she was someone to be respected. The students did what was asked of them without any complications. The teacher handled one situation in which one of the students was running in class, which is against classroom rules, simply and without making a big deal about it. She did not raise her voice but simply reminded the student that he’s not supposed to do that; the student walked back to his table then walked back to where he was running to. It was interesting that within the first five minutes of class the teacher had established what they were going to be doing that day and broke the class up into groups and everyone went their way to the station they we assigned.

Sydney and Daniela jumped right into it with helping out the students at their stations. I am a little bit more laid back and mostly just observed what was going on. But somehow I missed a lot of things in the class. Sydney and Daniela who were busy helping students caught things I hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t until we reconvened out of class when we were talking about what we observed that I realized how much I missed. I hadn’t noticed that the teacher was simultaneously teaching students at one station while also keeping track of the students at the other station. The teacher used new technology to enhance the learning experience of the students but not relying too much on it; that in my opinion could also hinder learning if used too much. The room was much more spread out and colorful and not dull and cramped.

Teachers need to be able to multitask, observe and keep track of their students, and help each individual student understand the content. I feel like I need to work on this much more if I want to be able to teacher a class. Working for RFKC has helped me tremendously but I still need to sharpen my skills in this area.

The things that I noticed happened outside the classroom unfortunately they were, at least in my opinion, not positive. I overheard a conversation that they still had silent lunches and the other I observed that students were accompanied by teachers everywhere they go and in straight lines without talking. Maybe it’s just me but I remember when they first implemented this in my elementary school.

We were not accompanied by teachers everywhere we went, we didn’t have to go everywhere in a straight line, and we could talk at lunch without being told only students who didn’t “act up” could talk. The best way I can put it is that it was a lot like high school for kids. Kids in middle school would always talk about going into high school like a prison mate talks about getting out of jail. The student was entrusted with more freedoms without having teachers constantly monitoring them. In the same way that was how my elementary school was.

Then one year we were told that we to be accompanied by a teacher everywhere we went, always in a straight line with a finger over our lips and with cameras lining every hall every ten yards. We were never allowed to talk at lunch and if we did there was a teacher with a bad temper with a megaphone yelling at us and we were not allowed to go out to our twenty minute recess. They also enforced a strict dress code that if broken you were not allowed to go into the school. They also introduced new strict word bans and anyone who broke them, even if they were just joking, was severely punished.  

This is the main reason why my family moved to the other side of the state, for a better education. Education is so incredibly important that people will move to another part of the state they live in or to another part of the country for their child’s education. This is not a small or light thing to talk about. I know I sometimes focus too much on the negative instead of the positive. After reading so many blogs about our experiences almost every one of them had positive and enlightening thoughts on what we observed but I feel like someone has to say something negative, to give a different view point on the subject. This is the reason I sometimes act so hostile towards schools when I see them implementing anything that resembles what my own school did. School is supposed to be a place of learning, a place where a student shouldn’t have to be afraid that he may say or do something against “policy” that will get him into a lot of trouble. School is supposed to be a comfortable and safe place to learn not a prison to escape from.