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.