Classroom Contextual Factors, and Students as a bonus!

I decided to toss my Students section in here just in case you all were interested. Enjoy!

Classroom:

My classroom is fairly large with 34 desks in an interesting formation, that looks like two E's facing each other on each side of the room, with some island desks in between. The students are surrounded with books, and there are 8 computers at the back of the room, though they seem to be reserved for the use of another class that sends students in to use them. There are multiple posters around the room that relate to the writing process, as well as a poster with step-by-step directions for starting class, and a poster with instructions for ending class. The document camera is up front with the Smart Board, and the projector is right up close to the Smart Board, so no one can really walk in front of it because it's up too high and cleverly angled. The feeling of the classroom is one that is hard to describe, since it combines a sense of sterility with a sense of being in a book nook, and it may account for the discomfort that some of the students seem to feel on entering the room, though I am continually intrigued by the books I walk by around the room. The 6th grade students get to use the books, so they love the space, but my 8th grade students I'll be teaching have no relationship to them, and so don't find any value in having them around the room. I've been using the document camera and the SmartBoard quite a bit when assisting with vocabulary, and I really enjoy having these tools available, unlike in my student teaching. I'll definitely be using a lot of mixed media and technology since I have the necessary tools available.

Students:

I'm teaching one of my cooperating teacher's 8th grade language arts classes. My class has 16 boys and 14 girls, though it sometimes seems to be all boys because they're so much louder. Part of my task is definitely to make the girls participate more. My class is mostly made up of white and Hispanic students, in a very even mix, with a couple of students of other ethnicities. I have six TAG students and two IEP students, though one of them is both TAG and on an IE, and requires a lot of encouragement and extra motivation because he doesn't see the point of a lot of the work we assign. I have one ELL student in my class who has been classified as a level 2, but my teacher believes he's really more of a level three, or he wouldn't be doing as well as he is in this mainstream, grade-level class. I also have two AVID students who are very well supported by the staff, including the aide we now have in my classroom who comes in specifically for them and our ELL student. I will definitely be doing a lot of differentiated instruction, as well as incorporating some of the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) elements I've learned in my ESOL class. I've decided to incorporate a lot of literacy activities and SIOP procedures because they benefit everyone, not just the students on IEPs or who are in AVID or who are English Language Learners. I also chose the book I'm doing my unit on, Tangerine, because it addresses racial and economic issues in a community and in a middle school, and I believe my students will have many insights and connections to make with the text since they are in a similar school.

Extended School Contextual Factors

Mill Stream Middle School is a Title I school that was built in 2001, so everything is still very nice and new. The use of technology in the classrooms is a huge step up from my student teaching location, as all the teachers have document cameras and Smart Boards, and there are many classroom sets of books in my supervising teacher's room. However, since they are Title I, I have to keep in mind that 73% of students are on free or reduced lunch, as the 7th grade counselor told us, so even though the school looks affluent, the students are not. The student population of Mill Stream is 51% White, 40.6% Hispanic, 2.9% Asian, 2.3% Native American, 1.6% Black, and 1.6% other (ODE website, 2009). There is a large support staff, with 4 part time counselors, a CARE team, a Youth Service Team, a Community Outreach Specialist, special education staff, ESL staff, TAG staff, and various district support personnel who come around as needed. There is a very strong network of programs to support students, such as mentoring groups, peer mediation groups, a grief counseling group, and various community building groups, so there are many places to send students with home life problems. I think this creates a very supportive environment for the students, and it creates multiple communities for the students to belong to.

However, there is an undercurrent of competition at the school that occasionally boils over into ugliness at assemblies. The Mill Stream football team was undefeated until about a week ago, so they considered themselves the top dogs in middle school football, and openly scorn all other schools and their teams. This focus on their football team means that they have no basketball, and no soccer. I have also heard from some of the teachers that they value the male sports teams, such as football and wrestling, much more than the female sports teams, such as volleyball. Actually, volleyball is the only female sport that they have, besides the cross country co-ed options. This spirit of competition is the only gimmick the administration seems to use to motivate students for activities, and I directly noticed this directly in the last assembly I attended, where they pitted the teachers against each other divided by whether they were Ducks or Beavers fans, and made them compete in a tug-of-war. After the tug-of-war, they tried to tie it to their food drive, which they have made into a competition between the grade levels. The only thing it really did was make the kids behave horribly towards each other and horribly toward the teachers, and whipped them into such a frenzy, they were almost rioting for the last ten minutes of the day. The teachers in my section don't coach any sports, so they don't feel as strongly about the sports teams, but the general aura of competitiveness of both the staff and students makes me nervous.