How Typical [Substitute Assignment]
How Typical [Substitute Assignment]
“Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving”
-Norman PaperNick
Art Teacher. South Bronx. 25 Minute Commute Time. PS/IS/MS. (K-Gr.*)
Purely basing my opinion on just the facade of the building, I had no idea what to expect. My assignment location was in an area of the South Bronx that I had never been into. The few kids walking towards school seemed merry and weren’t shooting each other. The people inside the bodega were nice. Even the weather was kind of nice for a January morning and as anyone would expect, any of the teachers that I saw walking in the direction of the 2 or 3 schools all clustered in a span of a black, well…they all shared the look in their eyes…Melancholy and lack of caffeine…the last flames of a 3 day weekend.
The scenery inside of the school was that of the typical elementary school. Of course, there was the customary line dividing the hallway in half. Of course, said hallway was painted with the cold, sky blue paint against lime green frames. And of course,there was the familiar sight of the police officers assigned to the building – there to greet everyone with a lack of interest in the actual visitor entering the building accompanied by ghettoness and weave (which would not be kosher policing the streets). Skipping forward past the search for the Main Office (which was on the third floor) I received my schedule and the first of my coverage assignments (which were surprisingly very close the ones I had prepared myself) and headed to my first assignment. Kindergarten. The classroom, and lead teacher were quite bright, and bubbly. After introductions, we went to go and pick the children up from the cafeteria to begin the day. The “line leaders” made all the stops, and it was kind of cute watching the little people hold hands in the one straight shot queue back to the classroom. After normal housekeeping things, Ms Teacher put out the leveled readers for the different kids, and then the kids quite calmly swapped their books out of their backpacks for new books for the week. Honestly, it was a sight to behold as this was done without incident.
Back when I was in Kindergarten, the reading campaign launched by the government was ‘Read to Me’; a sort of way to encourage parents and children to spend quality time together….And when that nice but flawed idea unavoidably failed due to its overwhelming triteness (Single parents? Economic recession? Reganomics? Creation of the term “latch-key child?”) and obvious issues (i.e. suppose a students parents couldn’t read..thus who reads to who?) ‘Read to Me’ exists as a program these days still, however, it is now tailored far more for parents to read to their INFANTS, thus avoiding some of the deficiencies of its previous incarnation.
Anyway, it was around 2nd grade, when my teachers/literacy instructors resorted to the “Book-It” program (a collaboration with Pizza Hut) which basically bribed students to read by dangling a personal pan pizza once they received credit for reading a book. In my opinion, it theoretically worked well for my own independant reading studies – I had been exposed to tons of words at once, and felt like I was actively in charge of my reading. Other students and I even challenged each other with reading but I can’t help but imagine that I (and other students) probably learned a lot of words (pronunciation and/or definitions) wrong.
The Emblem of "Book It"
No offense meant to Ms. Teacher at all (or for she whom I was filling in for) but I think that Literacy time probably needs to be broken into large groups, rather than the students reading seperately. As I let the kids do the ELA/Literacy point-each-finger-slowly-at-the-word-while-you-read thing, I noticed that a lot of the students kept getting stuck at words, which are repeated several times. It’s frustrating not knowing the way that the class is fully structured on a daily basis. Yet even without specific knowledge of ongoing processes and also being aware that I have such a small sampling of what that group has learned….well, it bothers me that several kids were stuck on the words “home” and “name.” Consider the fact that there was a word wall which included far more difficult words than the ones the kids were discovering independently. On a positive note though, the kids didn’t stop with frustration, and even repeated the words after I corrected them- often times they would attempt to re-read the entire (two sentence) page correctly.
However, this was a great pace-setter for the day. The children worked hard. The teacher smiled. Learning was had. Respect, rules, and energy was highly present. Despite my inner concerns about the reading skills, and levels of the class in whole, Ms. Teacher seemed quite involved in helping them improve. She most certainly will be a teacher that they remember when they grow up. And with the end of this period, I went forward to teaching 7th graders a fun art lesson.
Or so I thought…….(To Be Continued)
[CHESTER KENT]
[Note: This posting is probably the most serious of the experience at this school. The next few postings will include what I can only describe as something that I will tag as under the "These Evil Thoughts" catergories.]
