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.
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