Week 14

I'm nearly completely finished with my documentary of all the high school students I've interviewed, and these are the last few weeks of my internship. I've been recording more and more of what the students say during class, and I'd like to share some gems from the third graders:

Student 1: "Did you know the moon landing was actually fake?" The teacher answered this by stating that the moon landing is fake just like Elvis Presley dying is fake; no one really knows.

Student 2: "Can I go to the bathroom?"

Teacher: "I don't know, can you?"

Student 2: "YES!" The student proceeded to jump up and sprint across the room until the teacher could stop him. 

Student 3: (in the middle of a silent reading break): "Do dogs float?"

Sixth grader 1: "Puberty is the most powerful force of the gods. It's a fact."

Sixth grader 2: "Why do all kids love their moms more than their dads?"

I also got the opportunity to watch the first graders rehearse for their bugs concert/play, and I have to say the first graders from my class were by far the cutest. They can sing better than me too! 

AZ Merit testing is finally over and I have a feeling the rest of the school year will be a blast. 

Weeks 12 & 13

The students have been testing for what seems like forever. It's all on the computers, and I'm not allowed to help them with anything. I've also been gone for half a week out of town, so hopefully this week when I return, the testing will be over.

My third graders have been taking the AZ Merit and another test, but since they're on computers, the tests have the ability to generate new test questions based on the students' skill level. If the students do poorly on a subject, the computer will generate more and more questions until it feels the students have mastered the material. Unfortunately, this means that the students who don't try will never ever complete the test. There were students in the classroom when I arrived who had already been taking the test for five hours. Many of the children in my classes have learning disabilities, and it is easy for them to get discouraged when they are repeatedly asked questions they don't understand. This brings down their moral and work ethic and leads them to answer as many questions as fast as possible just to be finished with their test. But on the computers, this has the opposite effect.

It takes forever.

I sat in on an eighth grade class during one of the days my third graders were testing and they were surprisingly calm and well-behaved. They read The Outsiders and practiced grammar for the AZ Merit and worked on a vocabulary project. They stared at me more when I first came in than the little kids do, probably because I look closer to their age and can't pass off as just another teacher. Sometimes I honestly feel like I blend in perfectly with the eighth graders. It's a little scary.

My first graders, however, were finished with their testing last week and worked on writing and learning about Earth Day. They watched videos about how to keep our earth clean, and even though one girl kept insisting electricity was good for the environment, I think the students took away some valuable lessons. The student teacher also led a class where the students worked on discerning facts and opinions. I found it was particularly hard for them to decide whether "cats are cute" was a fact or not because one little girl was so insistent that it was true. Still, I think my first graders have come a long way since I started my internship. They no longer cry when they have to write and they don't need a rewards system to keep in line. I only have a few more weeks at Sunset Heights, but I hope I'll continue to see the students grow and end the school year successfully.

Week 11

With the new laptops becoming more and more common in the classroom, there has been less and less for me to do. The first graders went on a field trip to the zoo, which made me wish I was a six year old too. Instead, I stayed upstairs and listened to the teachers grow impatient with their students. Now more than ever I hear teachers complaining and struggling to keep their classes focused and on task. I've heard students get more unruly during a full moon, so I googled it. It's about five days until the full moon. I don't know what's wrong with these kids.

However, they're still extremely spirited and entertaining. This week, the third graders read about the Panama Canal. They had a mini-geography lesson to put the canal into context with the rest of the world. Their teacher, Mrs. H, also showed them where the Persian Gulf is because that's where she grew up. But before explicitly showing them on the map, she had the students guess where the Persian gulf was. They all seemed to think it was near California, or that it was "Middle East." One student became very interested in what kind of wildlife the Panama Canal had, insisting that there must be pandas because the name sounds similar.

There are not pandas in the Panama Canal.

I've been finishing up the final interviews for my senior research project. I interviewed two girls from Sunrise, both seniors, and a freshman boy from Liberty. I've definitely found that the older the student is, the more fluent and coherent their answers to my interview questions are. The two senior girls took over ten minutes for the entire interview, and the freshman finished it in under five. I've also found that freshmen take my questions more literally and answer from an academic perspective while older students tend to take more creative liberty in interpreting what I mean. Older students talk much more about how they've changed as people in a social context and younger students focus mainly on what they're learning in school and how their education has changed over the years.

I've also come to find that editing sucks. Editing interviews and trying to create a story line has proven to be much much harder than I originally anticipated. No two students have answers similar enough where I can put them side by side in my documentary and say "this is a definite trend." I suppose this variety is what I wanted--to obtain unfiltered opinions from high school students on their personal experiences--it just takes a long time to edit together. The only consistent answer I got was from BASIS students when I asked them what was valued more in their school: social life or academics? Everyone answered immediately with academics.

I've had some students say exactly what I've been looking for as an answer to one question and then completely go off topic during the next one, but no matter what my research yields, I'm going to be true to the students' opinions and experiences and not edit away the responses I don't agree with. I have a week left to edit them all together. My only wish is that the documentary will be coherent, but with the person I have lined up to be the voice of my narration (Landon!), I'm sure it will be.

Week 10

Coming back to school after spring break made me realize that these last couple of months really are the final stretch for these teachers. I've also realized that, out of all the teachers I've worked with over the span of my internship, only two haven't explicitly told me not to get a teaching degree. Today, three of the teachers for the 3-8th graders were talking about quitting their jobs and working at McDonald's as a more profitable source of income. I think teachers would love their jobs so much more if 1. they didn't have to pay for nearly everything in their classroom and 2. they got paid as much as they deserve ($15 every time they have to deal with a difficult student--they'd be rich).

Over the past two weeks, the students have been learning in a less traditional classroom setting, both in the third grade and first grade classes I've been sitting in on. The students use laptops for educational video games. Seeing as I'm awful with technology, it was quite a struggle for me to help my first graders navigate their "rules of talking" lessons. The younger students lacked the patience to sit and listen to the entire lesson, and seeing as they cannot read yet, they had no information with which to answer the questions in the quiz portion of the game. Also, the laptops are horrible. About six out of fourteen of them actually work, which made me realize it's not only teachers who need more money; it's the school itself. I can't wait until I can vote on school funding issues in Arizona.

I conducted an interview with my first non-student this week as well. I will refer to her as Mrs. G, a teacher who works with seventh and eighth graders and helps them transition into high school. I asked her about four questions on how the elementary school culture translates into a high school atmosphere and what her students teach her on a daily basis. Her answers were much more eloquent than many of the students I've interviewed, and I've come to realize that everybody I've interviewed has a pretty positive take on the schooling system. Even though there isn't much funding, some academically-inclined students are stuck in a school that values sports more than anything, and grades are a constant source of stress, students and teachers alike seem to focus on the aspects of school that have benefited them the most which I've found to be very encouraging. If I can ever edit my hours worth of interview footage together, I hope I'll be able to bring this sense of hope to life.

Week 8

I've been spending so much time upstairs with the older students that I'm beginning to feel like one myself. There are at least two or three teachers in the classroom at all times, and when the students aren't testing, they don't need my help to complete their work. So I sit at a desk and write my screenplays; I've written 150 pages in the span of two weeks. I also have begun writing down interesting tidbits of conversation I hear from the students. For example:

Sixth grader 1: Mrs. H, Mrs. H, guess what a girl told me.

Mrs. H: What, Sixth grader 1?

Sixth grader 1: She likes me, Sixth grader 2, Sixth grader 3, and Sixth grader 4!

Mrs. H: Hon, why do you think she likes all of you?

Sixth grader 2: Because I'm hot.

Sixth grader 1: No it's because I'm always like (he jumps back from Mrs. H's desk, turns around, and starts attempting to twerk) bootybootybootybooty!

Mrs. H: Sit down and do your work. 

Sixth grader 1: Just sayin'.

Interactions like these are common in the older classroom, especially with Sixth grader 1. However, there are brief periods where there are no students in the room, and everything is peaceful and still for a moment. During one of these periods, a teacher who lives in that room asked me about my senior project. I told her about my topic and research, and she informed be about the difference she, as a teacher, has seen in lower social-economic status (SES) schools compared to schools like Sunset Heights. Apparently at lower SES schools, the students hold the teachers to a higher standard and tend to respect them more once they've established themselves as the authority in the room. However, in higher SES schools like Sunset Heights (and certainly like BASIS), the students have a larger sense of entitlement and tend not to trust or bond as much with the teachers. After spring break (which will be all of week 9 woot!), I'm going to interview her about the differences she has already told me and use it in my documentary.

In the first grade classroom, the students are still trying to write guided paragraphs. The new topic is Sea Turtles. When Mrs. B writes too fast, much of her class begins to feel alienated or discouraged, so some students stop altogether. During times like these, Ms. R, the student teacher, and I have to go in and work with the students one on one to get them writing again. This, unfortunately, can be like pulling teeth. I was trying to help a student who I will call S. He had the topic sentence down, but he was still four sentences behind and almost all his classmates had already left the room. I tried to get him started with a single letter, T, but he claimed to not know what it was.

S cannot perfectly identify letters and numbers yet, but I knew for a fact that he knew how to write the letter T. I asked him what was wrong, and he responded, "My brain's asleep today." So I told him to tap on his noggin and wake it up. S shook his head and said, "No it's asleep at home in my bed. I can't reach it." It took at least five minutes for me to negotiate with S; first he said it would take ten minutes for his brain to return and wake up. I suggested ten seconds, then he brought the time down to five minutes, then two, and then--bam!--S's brain returned and he was ready to write! He wrote down two whole sentences and I had never been so proud. But then he started whining again, saying how much he didn't want to do it, and the process started all over again. 

For how much the first graders complain, we really don't do too much work in their room. We spent a total of 10-15 minutes that week outside, gardening. I got sprayed with the hose at least six times while the students watered their plants, and while Mrs. B didn't seem to enjoy their unruly nature outside or the dirt surrounding their carrots and bean plants, I loved seeing the students so excited. On the last day before spring break, we had the students make slime out of glue, water, borax, glitter, and food coloring. Some of the students--mainly the boys--refused to touch it because they didn't want to get dirty. Sixth graders 1 and 2 came down to help the first graders make their slime, and they behaved rather differently as role models for the younger students compared to how obnoxious they normally are with their peers. At the end of the day, it was messy, it only half worked, and the students loved it, so I considered it a success. 

Week 7

I began my first week with the new student teacher in my first grade classroom. I was initially worried that the students would like her more than me and I'd be sitting in the corner doing nothing all day, but I got two hugs from the little guys that day and I felt a little better. Mrs. B asked the students what was new in the classroom on the student teacher's first day. It took them a couple of minutes, but after finding a new shelf and poster, the students finally settled on the student teacher. When Mrs. B asked if anyone remembered her name, they all either shook their heads or guessed Miss Genna.

The first graders started working on a guided paragraph this week. The topic was butterflies, and the end goal was to have a completed packet in which they brainstormed, wrote a rough draft, edited their rough draft, and wrote a final draft. Needless to say, Mrs. B had a tough time with that project. The students were very interested in the butterflies, but not so much in the writing part. One student, whom I will refer to as C, kept insisting that he was on fire whenever Mrs. B went too fast for him. He often gets easily frustrated and yells at the other students. One day, as he was growling at his paper, he looked up and yelled, "Why is everybody staring at me?" One of the other teachers in the room, Ms. R, said it was because we thought he was cute in an attempt to cheer him up. Instead, he crawled under the desk screaming "I am NOT cute! I'm not cute!"

However, after a calmer couple of days, I saw another student whom I will refer to as J, ask Mrs. B why C yells at everybody all the time. Mrs. B prompted J to ask C that question directly, so J leaned across his desk and whispered, "C, why do you yell at us so much?" I was expecting C to yell back in frustration, but his answer was a lot more honest and mature than even something I'd expect from an adult. One thing I admire about C is that he never hides what he feels. C responded, "It's because it can just be so hard for me to concentrate" and my heart melted a little. The class was quieter for C for the rest of the day.

Since the student teacher was doing the large majority of what I had been doing for Mrs. B before, I was sent upstairs to Mrs. H's classroom for a third grade class. I still got to participate in my first grade writing class, but for the rest of the day, I now deal with third through eighth graders. It's been rather enlightening, to put it gently. While the first graders blatantly show belligerence just because they don't want to do their work, many of the sixth graders seem to enjoy giving teachers a hard time. One sixth grade student, after being yelled at for talking during a test, raised his hand and said, "Mrs. H, I hope you don't take this personal, but why you gotta be such a hater?" Sixth grade, so far, seems to be the most difficult group.

Furthermore, my senior project filming and research outside of my internship has been difficult as well. One of the Catholic schools at which I had requested to research replied, saying they currently had too much on their plate to accommodate me. However, part of me suspects they were wary about my research because I may not portray their practice of teaching Creationism in the best light. But besides that, I have made connections with students in different types and sizes of schools across the valley. I am confident I can get the results that I need from friends and coworkers in public, private, and online school, and I'm excited to see where their interviews lead me.

Week 6

I began my first week with the new student teacher in my first grade classroom. I was initially worried that the students would like her more than me and I'd be sitting in the corner doing nothing all day, but I got two hugs from the little guys that day and I felt a little better. Mrs. B asked the students what was new in the classroom on the student teacher's first day. It took them a couple of minutes, but after finding a new shelf and poster, the students finally settled on the student teacher. When Mrs. B asked if anyone remembered her name, they all either shook their heads or guessed Miss Genna.

The first graders started working on a guided paragraph this week. The topic was butterflies, and the end goal was to have a completed packet in which they brainstormed, wrote a rough draft, edited their rough draft, and wrote a final draft. Needless to say, Mrs. B had a tough time with that project. The students were very interested in the butterflies, but not so much in the writing part. One student, whom I will refer to as C, kept insisting that he was on fire whenever Mrs. B went too fast for him. He often gets easily frustrated and yells at the other students. One day, as he was growling at his paper, he looked up and yelled, "Why is everybody staring at me?" One of the other teachers in the room, Ms. R, said it was because we thought he was cute in an attempt to cheer him up. Instead, he crawled under the desk screaming "I am NOT cute! I'm not cute!"

However, after a calmer couple of days, I saw another student whom I will refer to as J, ask Mrs. B why C yells at everybody all the time. Mrs. B prompted J to ask C that question directly, so J leaned across his desk and whispered, "C, why do you yell at us so much?" I was expecting C to yell back in frustration, but his answer was a lot more honest and mature than even something I'd expect from an adult. One thing I admire about C is that he never hides what he feels. C responded, "It's because it can just be so hard for me to concentrate" and my heart melted a little. The class was quieter for C for the rest of the day.

Since the student teacher was doing the large majority of what I had been doing for Mrs. B before, I was sent upstairs to Mrs. H's classroom for a third grade class. I still got to participate in my first grade writing class, but for the rest of the day, I now deal with third through eighth graders. It's been a big jump. While the first graders blatantly show belligerence just because they don't want to do their work, many of the sixth graders seem to enjoy giving teachers a hard time. One sixth grade student, after being yelled at for talking during a test, raised his hand and said, "Mrs. H, I hope you don't take this personal, but why you gotta be such a hater?" Sixth grade, so far, seems to be the most difficult group.

Furthermore, my senior project filming and research outside of my internship has been difficult as well. One of the Catholic schools at which I had requested to research replied, saying they currently had too much on their plate to accommodate me. However, part of me suspects they were wary about my research because I may not portray their practice of teaching Creationism in the best light. But besides that, I have made connections with students in different types and sizes of schools across the valley. I am confident I can get the results that I need from friends and coworkers in public, private, and online school, and I'm excited to see where their interviews lead me.

Week 5

For my internship at Sunset Heights, there was no school Monday and Tuesday of this week, so the younger students were well-rested and ready to learn on Wednesday when they returned.

Unfortunately, this didn't last through Thursday and Friday.

In the first grade writing class, the students began to discuss topics--how to come up with a topic and recognize one in context. The kids seemed to enjoy talking about dogs. In fact, dogs were the only topic they were able to focus on. Dogs and puppies. After multiple behavioral issues, the teachers Mrs. B and Ms. R had to reassign seats three separate times.

Finally, on Friday, the students were given an open-ended prompt: write about your favorite toy. The teachers did not help them with their writing at all, and the kids were given half an hour to draw a picture and write a few sentences about their toy. They struggled with this quite a bit. One girl claimed she didn't know how to spell and wrote random letters with no spacing in between. Another student ignored the prompt and simply wrote: "I like to go in my backyard." One boy turned his paper in after the full thirty minutes with only the words teddy bear written down (and misspelled). The students made their dissatisfaction with the assignment clear; the room sounded like Mrs. B was pulling teeth.

However, I also began my research with high school students this week, and they were much more eager to cooperate. I interviewed students from BASIS Peoria about their personal high school experience, the value of their education, and how they perceived BASIS culture. Surprisingly, very few had negative reviews on the school itself, but almost everyone I interviewed expressed a desire to better manage their time and be more social. The overall vibe from the BASIS students: nerdy, but confident in their nerdiness.

Weeks 3 & 4

The past few weeks have certainly been interesting with the sugar rushes on Valentine's Day and excitement after field trips. Recently, I have noticed more behavioral issues. We had one girl decide to cut her hair in the middle of the first grade writing class. After this, another student refused to leave the corner of the room, shaking in fear, because "if she could cut her own hair, that means she could cut mine too!" The other two teachers I work with have had to deal with language from another first grader, and struggled with a writing student who writes every day yet claims she can't read.

In my older class, the students can be unruly, but they at least recognize when they push their teacher too far. One of them wrote me a poem about his feelings, and the sixth graders became very interested in high school events I've been to--e.g., prom. One of the most striking things I've noticed in the older class is their growing conception of what is "cool" and what is not--this is extremely different from the sixth graders at BASIS Peoria. At Sunset Heights, the students cannot try too hard academically without being a nerd, there is a certain style in between fancy and lazy (joggers are extremely popular) that all of the "cool" kids seem to have.

In general, the older students seem to want to learn more and try harder to catch up with their peers while the first graders don't seem to care or fully grasp how much they are falling behind in their writing. Even so, almost all of the first grade students have made noticeably improvements in the few weeks I've been working with them, and if they can overcome their frequent behavioral issues, I think that by the end of the school year they will be able to write fluently, with limited vocabulary and sentence structure, on their own.

Weeks 1 & 2

For the past week, I've been working at my internship at Sunset Heights Elementary and gaining insight on the public school education system and how it affects the very early stages of education. I observe a first grade writing resource class and a sixth grade math resource class for two hours every school day. My on-site adviser, Mrs. Bell, has been showing me how to do lesson plans according to the school, state, and student standards. In general, the younger students are very eager to learn and fast to overcome interpersonal issues. I have yet to observe a lecture in the sixth grade class, but so far they seem slightly more socially-oriented than the younger students. Overall, both sets of students are excited and talkative, but display significant struggles in their respective resource classes.