CLICK HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES »

Thursday, April 17, 2008

In the Classroom


Last semester for my special education class we had to complete so many hours of observations. I would like to share this experience because I feel that being in the classroom and seeing what it is like day by day had a big impact on my life. I thought it would be a breeze being a special education teacher because there are so many paras in the room. This experience did not change my mind about wanted to become a special education teacher but it certainly had a huge impact on the way I felt about it.
I did my observations at P.S.30 elementary school. The principal is Mrs. D. Spina, the assistant principal is Mrs. K. Nuzzela. I picked this school because I went there and my little brother still goes there. The class I observed was a third and fourth grade special education class. There was a total of thirteen children in the class. The teacher is Ms J Owens, and the paraprofessionals are Ms. Mucchino, Ms. G. Persico and Mrs C. Miskowitz.
At first I was a little nervous because I did not know what to expect. When I got into the classroom I said good morning and surprisingly all of them said it back at the same time. From that point on I realized that there was nothing to be worried about and that these children seemed to be a nice, respectful group. The teacher told the class that they had a visitor because people want to see how wonderful they all were doing, and that seemed to put a smile on most of their faces.
On the board all the way on the right hand side there was a list titled “Flow of the Day”, it said 8-9 science, 9-10 reading (tree of birds/word study), 10-11 math patterns of the day, 11-12 lunch, and 12-1 HW/ writers workshops. I thought that this was a good idea because the children can understand what needs to be done to have a successful day at school. Next to the “Flow of the Day” was homework and one of the first things the class did was to copy down the homework in the brown homework book. I would say that it took the class a good twenty minutes to write down the four things they had for homework. The teacher and the paraprofessionals kept walking around the room to push them along if they got distracted or began to daydream. When they were finished the teacher began the math lesson. The Obj (objective) was to use patterns of hundreds and thousands. The rule was when adding or subtracting hundreds only the hundred place changes, and when adding or subtracting thousands only the thousand place changes. The students did not really grasp the math lesson. The teacher seemed to be getting frustration that they were not grasping the lesson. She finallysaid that they needed more practice and crossed off the math homework. I noticed that a lot of the children seemed to be in a different world. They kept making funny noises and squirming around as if they were bored, and the teacher would yell.
When they were finished with the word study the teacher told the class to get into their assigned reading groups. One of the boys refused and began to curse at the paraprofessional. The para seemed to get really frustrated and began to yell back at him. He finally calmed down and got into his group. There ware three different groups, the teacher was working with one group and the paraprofessionals were working with the other two. One of them went over word study words using flash cards. The other group worked on book called “Tree of Birds” and they did a story map, and the last group worked on vocabulary words.
I feel that doing observations was very rewarding. I got the chance to see what it was like being in the classroom with these special needs children. It is defiantly not as easy as some people think it may be. You have to have a lot of patience with these kids. Im glad I was assigned to do this because I received first hand knowledge on the way special needs children learn and behave. I feel that the only way of knowing if a career as a teacher is right for you is to actually observe in the classroom. I am looking forward to spending more time in the classroom.

0 comments: