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.

2nd Day as VIPS Volunteer 10/11/07

I was looking around the classroom for anything that I missed in my observations on my first visit. I noticed more things like the school supplies for the children: pencils, pens, rulers, glue, crayons, and colored pencils. There was a Welcome banner, the alphabet, and a calendar on the walls. I also noticed there were bins that held their different papers they were working on, such as poetry, literature, and handwriting. This time I noticed some murals in the halls that I missed last time. I got to explore the murals and the different hallways while the students were in the library when I first arrived at the school. The kindergarten area had murals on the walls, probably because they are younger. There was also a mural in the Library wing. It was a mural of students of different colors. I am now getting used to Ms. Chippis, the teacher, and students’ schedules. Today, they worked on Math, adding and subtracting, and multiplying by not even knowing these words directly. I saw that kids who did not cooperate with each other, which always seemed to be while they did activities on the rug, were sent to the back of the room to sit at their desks. During Reading time, they all sat in a circle, but when it was Math time, they sat in rows on the rug. Time went by so fast. It was 3:00 already. Instead of a dismissal bell, there was music. I wondered why they played music instead of a bell. Every kid in a class got in a single file line just to go outside. You can tell this school is very organized, but this could also be one of the reasons why these students can get a little boisterous. I can also that the teacher is very stressed in trying to get what she needs to get done. Because of this, she tends to vent her stress on her students by yelling, which is not good.