April 8, 2019

I see many children speaking Spanish in the classroom and around the school. I see how many of the students are comfortable with the main teacher and conversing with her in Spanish. She is quite understanding of the fact that some of the students are a bit more comfortable with some certain words in Spanish rather than English. This reminds me of the author Rodriguez. I feel this way because I see how comfortable the teacher in my classroom is with incorporating Spanish words and books into the classroom for the children that happen to speak Spanish. She also does this to show the other children in the classroom that it is normal to use more than just one language in life and to teach them a bit of Spanish.

I was once towards the back of the rug when a child I will call M was acting much better than normal due to the fact that he really wanted to go to the block center which has four available spots. He mentioned to the teacher that he was going to try extra hard to behave because he really wanted to make it to the center before it filled up. He had done well all day and was sitting perfectly still as she started to call out children's names. All four of the first children picked the block center, but none of them were M. Of course he was devastated because he informed the teacher before hand that he was going to be extra good and he followed through so he though that he would be rewarded for his good work but he was not. He then told me that he would go to the art center instead and he continue to sit still, criss-cross-applesauce with his hands folded in his lap but he was again not called on in the time that it took for the art center to fill up. He got annoyed because in that time, two other centers had also filled and he wouldn’t be able to do anything that he wanted to do that day. Even though he was sitting and acting perfectly the teacher made an effort to make him one of the last children called on and I watched her pick his card up and place it deeper in the pile so he would have to wait longer. This ended with him acting out. I have seen this a few other times in very similar situations. This reminded me of Delpit because the teacher taught all of the students the codes of power in the classroom. The students still disobey, however, even when they do follow directions, the teacher only gives some the credit they deserve. ​As a teacher, she should give some power to the obedient students to choose their centers but she only gave this power to some and not all.

One major incident that I've seen in the involving money issues in the school was during center time. I was assisting the art center while child A was attempting to hang his painting on a metal cabinet when he dropped the magnet that he wanted to use. When he pulled the magnet off, he dropped the magnet and the dry painting it was originally holding. They both fell a little to the side of the cabinet that was rather close to the wall. Along the wall was a pipe. Child A knew that he would not be able to reach the paper or the magnet, so he grasped the pipe to used it for balance. I didn’t realize he had grabbed it or that it was a burning hot pipe until he yelped out in pain and started to cry. I went over to see what had happened and he explaned. I touched the pipe to see just how hot it was and it even hurt me. I brought him to the teacher and she thought that he was just making a scene and not that there was really anything wrong until I told her that something was really wrong. This pipe should not have been exposed. It was such a hazard to these children and it had already hurt one of them. Its very disheartening that they didn’t invest in a way to keep this from happening. This reminded me of Kristof. This is because the student went to the appropriate ​person, the main teacher, and she did not listen to him at first. She made an assumption based on his past behaviors rather than listening to him nd looking at the facts in the moment.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EvDl_P4TTNjRsFDPkFNcJRikPvs_4TZXmT-C5xPdqKQ/edit?usp=sharing