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.