Last Visit 11/15/07

Well, I finally completed the nine visits and the fifteen hours for VIPS. Before I arrived to my last visit today, I was thinking that I didn’t want to give up the VIPS badge. I liked that red ribbon that was tied onto the badge. The badge also had field trip information on the back. In case it got lost, it would get sent back to the school address. On the front was information to let others in the school know that I was a VIPS volunteer there. I was thinking, too, about all my past visits and that I was going to miss everyone there. I finally got the courage to make that one last visit. For the first time, today’s class started off with a science experiment that they were continuing. They learned that colors are actually a mixture of several pigments. The kids were amazed to see the different colors (pigments) from ink on the special filter paper. When the teacher turned on the overhead for the Math lesson, one of the students noticed that the light seemed to create a rainbow on the paper. One was with lots of pinks and purplish colors and the other was with blue, green, and yellow. For their Math lesson they were working on separating things into categories. An example would be: Where did Ms. Cutter’s 3rd grade class like to eat?—either indoosr or outdoors would be the categories. They also looked at a bar graph and did line plots. Ms. Chippis was going to hand out their report cards when I gave my thank-you presents to her and the students. Ms. Chippis’ mouth dropped wide open when she saw the white board and the pencils along with the grips and erasers to go with it. I passed out the pencils to everyone while someone else in the class passed out the others. I saw the new eraser tips on their pencils when I looked if everyone got some. I also got my disposition paper back and the kids got their report cards. Ms. Chippis said that I can come back anytime I want to, to help out or just to help myself in my teaching journey. Counting down the last few minutes and then it was “love, sweet love!” just like one of the songs that they play at the end of the day instead of using bells. :)

8th Visit: 11/9/07

This was a visit to catch up on my 15 hours. I went only for one hour in the afternoon today. Almost there, one more visit to go, yay! Boy, I am going to miss them so much. Again, today, there was nothing for me to do. With the teacher, the kids went over the math test that they did yesterday. Most of them did alright. They were so quiet yesterday, it scared me.

7th Visit: 11/8/07

Today the teacher was giving the students a Math test. The test had to do with number placement and adding and subtracting. Ms.Chippis explained the format of the test to her students. The way that they have been taught in class is the way they should be doing it, by breaking down the problem into 100s and 10s and 1s. They took about an hour to complete the test. At first, Ms.Chippis planned to conclude the day by reading a book to the class. Instead, they just did silent reading by themselves until the end of class. As a volunteer, there really wasn’t that much for me to do. The other volunteer that showed up the other weeks also came again today. I feel more comfortable with another person there also helping. Though, today there really wasn’t a reason for me to be there. I spent most of my time daydreaming about myself as a teacher with my own class. Anyway, I also handed in my Dispositions form for Ms.Chippis to fill out so I can put it into my teaching folder that I will be passing in soon. Hopefully, I will get it back next week when I am back at the school.

6th Visit: 11/1/07

As I was waiting for the class to get back from the Library again, I saw that they had written a paper about their experiences. Some papers were about family, birthdays, and traveling from Puerto Rico to our country on a plane. I noticed they had spelling errors and grammatical errors. Otherwise they sounded great. For homework, they have to “publish” it. The teacher used the word “publish” as meaning the final draft. Next was their normal Math lesson on the schedule. They were learning to add coins. I noticed there was another girl volunteer today. There must me one always for the Math lessons that they have. I think that this is a great thing to do, rather than just be a reading buddy. Volunteers or tutors should just come in during the younger kids’ school day for a buddy or someone to work with. I joined in with a Math game that they played. The Math game was called “Close to 100”. The kids got in a group and dealt six cards out to each other. The cards were numbered one through nine including a wild card. Out of the six cards, they had to pick four to get an addition problem that got them close to 100. They did this activity for about a half hour. Everyone was really happy doing this. The teacher made them clean up their group of desks. There were folders and books everywhere. I saw some kids finishing up Halloween word searches. I heard that they will be watching a movie tomorrow if they get their papers in. Three things I noticed: one, my teacher wears jeans; two, the office to get in the school building is in a weird location. It’s not near the entrance of the school. Anyone could get buzzed in, such as a sex offender, and go through the whole building without being caught. And three, the office sign reads “officina principal”. Also, the school has a PTA meeting nextTuesday.

5th Visit: 10/25/07

I asked the teacher, Ms. Chippis, about why she chose to use the overhead instead of the blackboard, which is equipped. She said if she had a whiteboard she would preferably use that. The blackboard has chalk dust and that can get really messy. The teacher then went to pick up the kids from the library. As the teacher was doing that, I decided to search around for any more things to observe. I found in my search a Breakfast/Lunch menu written half in English and Spanish. This was the first time where I saw an example of information being bilingual in this school. I found out that they have a place that they go for Resource and a Nurse if they are not feeling good. I wondered if they had a translator though. What happens if a parent did not know how to speak English and wanted to take her kid out of school for something important? Well, anyways, when the kids came back, we went right on to the Math lesson. They were learning how to break up the numbers when they were adding, ex. 137=100+30+7. There was also another volunteer was helping out with the class today. The girl was only there for a half hour when I saw her. It looked like she seemed more like a tutor. For me, I am just a volunteer, of a mandatory program, an observer. The class, along with the teacher’s help, had written a thank you letter to a guest, Mr. Celio, who read the book, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, to them earlier this week. To jazz this letter up a bit, one of the kids in the class came up with the idea of designing their own pumpkins, and the teacher stapled them onto the letter on the easel paper. This turned out to be a fabulous idea. The kids were very creative and liked the project. During the project though, someone acted like a “bully” to one of her classmates. The teacher replied in a soft, strong voice, “I need to talk to your mother about this.” Ms. Chippis then gave a speech on how the school operates, talking loudly and slowly. There is no gum chewing allowed either, so she had the gum chewers spit it out into the trash. I do not remember if I said anything in an earlier journal entry about that they had girls’/boys’ lavatory passes. The kids went to the bathroom a lot today. She did more yelling during Math, than of the other activities and days that I was there. When I sit on the floor with them and make notes, sometimes my legs can fall asleep. I wonder if that could be a clue of why the kids could get so uncomfortable and jibber-jabber. They also finished a book as a class about a witch, ghost, and goblin the last few minutes of class. Some kids and I chose to sit at the desks this time instead of the rug. This was a better position for me at the time they were reading. At the end of school, there is supposed to be music playing, but I guess not. I did hear on the intercom a few interruptions for the teachers’ to excuse, maybe this is why it did not go on. I think they forgot. So everyone in the halls was looking at each other for a cue of when to leave. I left right after my class decided to leave as usual. I got a parking ticket as a surprise. Driving around where the school is, there seems to be just one-hour parking signs, but now I found out driving around the block about seven times, there is one street that has a bunch of two-hour parking signs. Hopefully, people won’t recognize this street now, as I have, if not, I’ll just park in the same spot where I got my ticket.

4th visit: October 18, 2007

I mentioned in a previous report that the teacher of this class passes out fake dollars as a reward system. Today, one student asked how much it would be if they were to get ice cream with the fake money. The teacher answered 40. I just thought that teachers (and parents) really shouldn’t reward children with food. Instead of food, she could reward them with a prize of an object of some sort like a magnet or such. Every time the teacher yelled, the kids still ignored her. Maybe yelling isn’t so effective. Today, she taught the same lessons that I’ve been observing in my past visits. I’m sure this is because I come in the same day and time each week. The class first had to do silent reading for 10 minutes. Afterwards, they did some math and reading later with the teacher. This time for Math, they learned adding and subtracting money. They used number lines as the strategy for adding and subtracting. Ms. Chippis uses the overhead instead of the blackboard to teach the math lesson. I don’t know why she chooses that method. I’m going to have to ask her. The teacher tells the kids not to erase anything in their Math workbooks, but I still see them erasing and making corrections. One girl did a problem on the overhead, and I could see that she got the wrong answer in her addition. The teacher did not notice this until after she completed her number line. The book they are reading with the teacher is Grandpa’s Convenient Store. Ms. Chippis uses a storyboard that is on an easel for her reading lesson. She has columns on this storyboard to write down vocabulary words, predictions of the story, and the students’ thoughts about the story. For homework, each student has to write a summary which should include a beginning, a middle, and the end for the book. Ms. Chippis’ previous students from last year came back just to make a quick hello and to see everyone who was in that day. Having the old students come back to see her is a sign that she is a good teacher. These are the kinds of teachers I want to learn from. Even though the teacher may yell at these kids, it seems that the kids will learn to appreciate the work they have accomplished this year as well as their teacher. I am sure they enjoy their lessons most of the time. One student was out for 3 days because of sickness. I felt badly how he has to catch up on everything now, especially for the Math lessons. One thing I did not mention in my previous journals is that there are bars on the windows of the school building. This probably is to prevent break-ins. A school in the city is a different atmosphere and surroundings than the suburban schools that I went to. At 3:00, I recognized the song on the loudspeaker that they use instead of a bell. It was Beethoven’s Symphony Scherzo #9.

3rd Day as VIPS Volunteer 10/12/07

Today was like my first visit when I was there before the kids took their NECAPs. We did Reading, Math, and worked on Art together. The kids had to write a paragraph incorporating certain vocabulary words about Central Park, the subject they were reading about on my first visit. Some of them just wrote sentences instead of a paragraph, which was wrong. The students who presented their paragraph and did it correctly, got a smiley face on their paper. I am getting to learn some of the students’ names and faces. There does not seem to be any diversity troubles in the classroom so far, like what I thought I saw on my first day. The one white girl who sat alone last time was with the others this week. She is actually very smart and creative like the rest of her classmates. While at their desks doing their art, the kids were chatting and teaching others to speak their different languages. They were translating their Spanish into Chinese and Portuguese. This was hilarious. “Tu estas stupidas”. Maybe not. The kids seemed to be laughing and having a fun time in their groups. I did, too. Man, they drew better than I did when I was in the third grade. The teacher wants me to come in on Thursdays now, because the kids are really hyper at the end of the week, and with another person in the room. They also played music at 3:00. I had another great day.