Ecological Study: Lilburn Elementary School

Samantha Vaughn

Georgia Gwinnett CollegeECED 3300

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Part I: Introduction-Description of the School Environment

This semester I had the privilege to observe at a very diverse school. On any

school day you can hear as many as 34 different languages on the campus of Lilburn

Elementary School. Lilburn Elementary School is located on the property which was

once owned by the McDaniel Family, which were Lilburn’s first settlers. Lilburn was

established in 1970. According to the History of Lilburn Elementary School pamphlet,

“The community of Lilburn was once a rural community then changed into a suburban

community and now a mobile urban/suburban mix.” The school hosts over 1250

students and their families. The students and their families speak languages from just

about 50 different countries. According to the principal, “The minority population has

increased to 80% since the year 2000.” Hispanics are the majority group at Lilburn

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Elementary, followed by African Americans. Following behind that are Asians and

Whites at one-third of the school population. Lilburn Elementary supplies free and

reduced lunches and over 79% of the student body is on this lunch plan.

Parent and community support is strongly appreciated and needed at any school.

Having the parents participate in their child’s learning and success is one of Lilburn

Elementary School’s goals. This school provides social services personnel who work in

the community. The afterschool program services almost 300 students. This afterschool

care serves as a safe haven. It offers healthy snacks, tutoring and exploratory activities

accessible for the students. Lilburn Elementary offers a parent center that recommends

resources to the parents to allow them to help their children at home. Lilburn has four

computer labs inside of the building and carts that have laptops are available for the

upper grades to check out. Lilburn is such a large school that there are two separate

music teachers, two separate art teachers, and the one physical education teacher has

two paraprofessionals.

According to the principal at Lilburn Elementary School the class sizes

vary by grade level. In the kindergarten classrooms there is on average twenty-two

students in each class, for first thru third grade there is on average twenty-four students.

As for the fourth and fifth grade classrooms there is on average twenty-eight students in

the classroom setting. Out of the fifty-one regular education teachers at Lilburn

Elementary School, three of the teachers are Asians, six are African American, and one

is Hispanic. In each special education classroom there are two paraprofessionals, and

each kindergarten class has one paraprofessional. Many first grade teachers believe

that they should be allowed at least a part time paraprofessional to help organize and

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assist in the paperwork. As for the English language learners (ELL) as the grade levels

get higher the number of English language learners decreases. This is a wonderful

statistic because it shows that the work they are doing with the students in helping them

learn English is really working. In the kindergarten classes there are 146 students in the

ELL classes. As the kids begin to learn to read and do more extensive work in the first

grade classroom, the teachers begin to notice more students that have the English

barrier. In the first grade classrooms there are 165 students as ELL’s. Once the child

graduates first grade and moves onto second grade, there are only 147 students in the

ELL program. In third and fourth grade there are 118 students. And finally in fifth grade,

there are only eighty-one students. That is a wonderful drop in numbers and it shows

great progress not only in the students, but also the teachers.

My first grade classroom is composed of over twenty students, my cooperating

teacher and myself. As you walk into the classroom to your left, on wall one (Fig. 1), is

the coat and back pack hooks. The children are allowed to hang their bag on whichever

hook they would like, but they know nothing can be on the floor. Moving around the

room in a clockwise movement you then come across the sink area and many shelves

that the teacher has all of her papers, markers, crayons, and books on. It is a tad bit

unorganized but nevertheless she knows where almost anything is. Continuing around

the room is the filing cabinets, and now a couple of posters that I had created helping

remind the students about people words and family names. Many students gather

around that cabinet during their writing center to help them brainstorm their writing, or

remember names (Fig. 1A). Moving over to wall two (Fig. 2.) is the media center. It

consists of several shelves of baskets of books all categorized from animal fiction, to

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bears, to teeth, to germs, and everyone’s pal Franklin (Fig. 2A). Against that same wall

is the calendar board and the reading strategies board. This is a bulletin board covered

in posters, papers, and beanie babies (Fig. 2B). Continuing to circle around the room on

wall three (Fig. 3) is another couple of book shelves pilled to the top with the teacher’s

workbooks and teaching books that my cooperating teacher has accumulated over the

years. Making it to the middle of the classroom is the long dry erase board, one third of

it is covered in the black and white word wall (Fig. 3A), the middle is the dusty smart

board, and on the right side is the sight words list and a tiny bit of extra space for the

teacher to teach. Alongside of the board is the corner with the three computers we are

allotted. Backed right up to the computers, on wall four (Fig. 4) is the teacher’s giant,

untidy desk. It is covered in papers. My cooperating teacher does not sit at the desk,

other than to check her email, which only happens while the children are at specials.

Returning back to the door there is two more book cases packed with books to help

teachers. Books that I have borrowed on many occasions to get lesson plan ideas for

my projects and lesson ideas for working with students inside the classroom. In the

middle of the classroom are the student’s tables (Fig. 5). Each table has a small

bookcase at the end to store all of their folders, book boxes, and notebooks. Standing in

the very center of the classroom and looking around the walls seem crowded. After

thirty one years of teaching my cooperating teacher has anything and everything to help

an educator succeed.

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Fig. 1 (above) Fig. 1A (above)

Fig. 2 (above) Fig. 2A (above)

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Fig. 2B (above) Fig. 3 (above)

Fig. 3A (above) Fig. 4 (above)

Fig. 5 (above)

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My first grade classroom started out with 25 wild children ready to learn and after

one child moved back to Mexico we now have 24. Like I stated earlier Lilburn

Elementary School is a very diverse community. Inside the four walls of my classroom

there are only four students that speak English only at home. Of those four children,

three of them are African American and the other child is Caucasian. Six of my first

graders speak only Spanish at home. They told me English is not spoken at all. One

student told me her parents do not allow her and her brother to speak any English at

home, and if they do they are punished. Ten students speak both English and Spanish

at home. As I asked a couple of them who in their family spoke English and who spoke

Spanish, one child told me that his mother spoke Spanish and his father spoke English.

As a couple of my questions about language spiraled into their parents occupations,

and the ages of their siblings I understood that the majority of the time the parent that

had a job is the parent that speaks English. We have four students in our class that

speak languages other than English and Spanish at home. One child speaks Bosnian,

another Viennese, the third Hmong, and lastly a little boy that speaks Urdu, which is

identified with Muslims. The language that is spoken at home has a great influence on

the child’s academic success. As for the student that is not allowed to speak English at

home, she is struggling academically. She is completely caught in the language barriers

and sometimes doesn’t know which language to speak at school. It is hard to teach the

kids the language for the eight hours they are at school, and then when they go home

there is no support for them to continue learning the language.

Having a large group of such young children in one classroom can become very

stressful at times. Retaining a schedule is important because consistency gives kids

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security. The schedule is viewed by the

children as a routine. It is the way they learn

what will or will not happen next. Not only

does it help the child learn parts of time it

also teaches them patterns and trust. On

most days we follow the schedule precisely.

The kids know when the bathroom break will

be happening and when lunch is. First thing

in the morning the kids come in and put their book bags away and either sit down at

their desk for a morning worksheet or they grab their personal identification card and go

upstairs to breakfast. At around 8:10 the morning announcements take place. During

the moment of silence we read the big rule of the classroom: DO EVERYTHING IN

LOVE.

The teacher then asks the class “how do we solve our problems?” and they all chant

back “in a nice way.” At this point the teacher is staring at the children that misbehaved

the day before and she points her skinny finger at them and then asks, “And if it’s not

nice…” and the children say, almost at a shout, “Don’t say it or do it.” This is the big rule

of the class. If the students act up later in the day she asks them if what they just did

Our First Grade Schedule

7:45-8:15 Quiet work/ breakfast/restroom8:15-10:00 Language Arts/Reading workshop/ Guided Reading10:00-10:45 Writing Workshop10:45-11:45 Math11:45-11:52 Restroom/Water11:52-12:22 Lunch12:22-12:45 Recess12:45-1:20 Word Work1:20-2:00 Specials2:00-2:45 Science/Social Studies/ Health 2:45 Dismissal

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was in love. After morning announcements we line up for a bathroom break, the teacher

almost immediately says “bathroom, water, line” to the students to remind them that

there will be no leaving the classroom until the next break. Once we have returned from

the bathroom we sit down at our desks and get out our yellow morning work folder. In

these folders are once-a-day worksheets. The questions on the page are simple things

such as; what day is it? What is the month? What number comes next? After the

students finish this they meet the teacher on the floor and she presents the reading

strategy they will be working on during reading centers. Once she has fought the battle

of trying to have all twenty-four students’ eyes on her, legs crossed and hands in their

lap, they stand up and meet her on the front floor and I dismiss them into their

appropriate centers. Since August the kids have followed this schedule, but just in the

past week the teacher has changed it and every single day before we transition into the

third reading center there is almost always about five students that run towards the door

for the regularly scheduled bathroom break. After we finish the reading centers,

depending on the day, we either do math centers or we have the students sit at their

desk and write. They are allowed to write about anything they would like, and most of

the time each child writes about the same topic just different words in each story. At

11:50 we head to lunch. The walk to the cafeteria is a little long for these little

munchkins. With twenty-four students the line spans about two miles long. While the

kids are in the lunchroom a couple of the other first grade teachers come to my

cooperating teacher’s classroom and eat together. At the beginning of the year during

this time they talked about what they did the weekend before, or about their families.

Now there has become more discussion about how to help certain students succeed.

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Another GGC student and I share our experiences that we remember from elementary

school sometimes. After the extremely short lunch break my cooperating teacher goes

upstairs to gather the children as I clean up the table from lunch and wipe it down. At

this time our children are so uncontrollable that luckily for us we get to head to recess.

As they sit against the wall in the hallway and wait on their friends to get out of the

bathroom, it is at that point where there are three first grade classes in this small

hallway, two of which are coming back from lunch and one that is coming inside from

recess. This is when the most children move their clip down inside the classroom, sit out

at recess, or take a lap on the playground. Most people who are not educators think that

the teachers have a break at recess, but in reality recess is more of a tattle –tailing party

than class is. After recess we have twenty minutes of word work, where we either do

word ladder activities or we work quietly on an activity with soft music in the

background. Those twenty minutes of quiet, calm and relaxing work goes by so fast. We

then find ourselves hustling to our scheduled specials class. Sometimes if we have to

go to physical education or music it can take us nearly ten minutes to walk there,

because of the length of our line or because of the constant behavior problems. The

schedule of our specials changes either every day or every two days. On day one and

two we go to music class, days three and four is art class, day five is literacy, day six is

the math specials, and days seven and eight are physical education days. After we drop

the our little friends off at specials it is now a rush of papers flying in the classroom as I

try and stuff all the homework and newsletters into the kid’s homework folders and as

the teacher writes letters home to parents. After this very short planning time teachers

are given, we both walk up to the mailroom and split ways. At this point it is two o’clock

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and I leave and she gathers the scholars and they head back to the classroom for

Science. Before she knows it its dismissal time and the kids are gone and she has just a

moment to sit down and breathe before she heads to a meeting, a conference or home.

Part II: The Student in School Contexts

Telling stories of my classroom and the experiences I have had with these germy

kids make many people laugh. One of the students has such an imagination that I

sometimes want to just get inside his head. He tells great stories of riding a cheetah to

school, and how his pet elephant didn’t want to come to class today or how he sleeps

on his roof while the rest of his family is inside. Every time he tells me these stories he

has a very serious face on, and if I begin to chuckle he asks me what is funny. There

are so many different personalities in these children daily that I sometimes wonder if I

am a circus leader.

Two of our students are very distracting to the other students. On some days

their behavior feeds off of one another, but on other days one will be acting up and the

other will tell us he does not want to act like that and he will have great behavior. Sadly

we have realized that if we take the one child that is acting up out of the classroom all

the children begin to behave and it is an entirely new learning environment. The other

students know that this little boy has problems. I have overheard a couple of girls call

him the “problem child”.

As for the interactions among the students, they normally interact with whoever

of the same gender is in their reading group, since most of their morning is spent with

those people. Just recently one of the girls that normally plays alone, made a couple of

new friends. Oddly enough they started hanging out with this little girl and playing with

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her because of what she was wearing to school that day… a light pink bed sheet as a

cape. The class was so shocked and confused when she walked in wearing this bed

sheet, but most people just ignored her, like they always do. A couple of girls flocked to

her and could not stay away the rest of the day.

The two boys that are above everyone else academically always hang out

together. They sit at the same table in class, and somehow are in the same reading

group. Also in their reading group is the boy that I work with individually every day on

his letters, writing and reading. The two other boys are a great influence on the third

child. They help him with his work and congratulate him when he gets something right.

Just the other day the little boy was having a hard time with his math and the other two

leaned over and helped him with one problem, then told him to try the rest on his own

and as he was doing it right one of the boys patted him on the back and said he was so

smart. It is moments like this that make me thankful of the class I was sent to and happy

that I am going to make a difference in other student’s education.

The interaction my cooperating teacher has with the students is completely

evident. There is one child who is extremely smart, his parents hold him on a tower and

they constantly compare him to other children. At conferences all the mother talked

about was how smart her son is and how far ahead he is from his other friends. After

the mother left all my cooperating teacher could say is that she did not think he was that

smart or that far ahead of the other students. In my opinion the boy is very smart

compared to other students in the class. He is always raising his hand to say just a little

more than the teacher did about bats or about the shapes on the calendar. I feel like the

teachers’ interactions with this child are distant. In my field notes I said, ‘It feels like she

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doesn’t want to admit that maybe he is really smart for his age.’ A couple of days ago

we received the scores for the Cogat testing that the children took a couple of weeks

earlier. This child scored the highest in the class, and even after my cooperating teacher

saw that she still had something negative to say about him. I understand that she

cannot answer every question he has or let him share his knowledge every day but I

think that maybe if she would just let him say all of what he wants to say that maybe

their interactions wouldn’t be so scarce.

As for the other students in the classroom, there is one little girl who cries for

absolutely no reason at all. Not only does she cry out of nowhere, she misbehaves and

when she gets caught she starts laughing. My cooperating teacher is very old school, if

you do not have respect for the teachers inside the classroom there will be problems.

It’s hard to explain how my teacher reacts to this little girl and what she says about her.

It is hard for both of us not to get a negative attitude when the little girl cries because

she doesn’t get her way. In fact, this little girl started at Lilburn later than the others did,

and during her second week in our classroom I reminded her to stay focused and she

started sobbing. I found myself sitting beside her telling her to calm down and almost

babying her. Once I realized this I stopped and noticed that this is what the little girl

wanted from me. She wanted me to baby her and give her the attention for something

that was so small it did not even matter. I cannot list the twenty-four students and the

teachers’ interactions with each but each interaction is different.

The atmosphere in my first grade classroom changes drastically when certain

teachers or staff members walk through the door. Every day the ESOL teacher comes

in and works with certain kids inside the classroom. The kids do not change their

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attitude or behavior when she is in the room because she is an everyday face. This

particular ESOL teacher is the closest thing I have seen at this elementary school to

crazy in love with children that I have seen. She is always making up ways to sing and

entertain my kids, and she helps me and teaches me how to do the same. The

atmosphere takes a completely different turn when the counselor walks into the

classroom. It is almost an entirely different group of kids when he is around. They laugh,

sing, and dance along with Mr. Counselor. They love when Mr. Counselor walks into the

room on Wednesday mornings, the learning environment is slightly altered and they

always jump for joy. One example we have of how the children’s attitudes change is a

little girl I wrote a journal entry on. She gets very defensive if you ask her any type of

question and she misses school like it is no big deal. The biggest factor of her behavior

we have noticed is in the computer lab she is very jittery. Her legs are constantly

moving and her eyes and face twitch badly. We notified the counselor of this behavior

and he pulled her out of class to talk to her. The days after that she missed, and when

asked why she was absent she said she couldn’t tell us. We started to wonder if she

was scared of women because of the way she interacted with myself, my cooperating

teacher and the ESOL teacher compared to the way she did with Mr. Counselor. When

he was in the room she was constantly calling him over to look at her work, or to praise

her. After much observation on this child, we came to the conclusion that her brother

who attended Lilburn Elementary School nine years ago had the same behavior issues

as her. The counselor said he would continue to monitor her behavior in case anything

else happened.

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Just recently I was working with the child that has the very creative imagination

and the possible speech impediment. We were sitting at the table finishing a math

worksheet when a very tall woman walked into the classroom. She and my cooperating

teacher exchanged a few words and she then walked over to this child and I. My

cooperating teacher told me that she needed to work with my student for a few minutes.

I then began to pack up my stuff and I glanced at the student and his face was frozen,

and his eyes wide. This lady was a stranger to him, and he did not seem pleased that

she was taking over. I explained to him that she would be working with him and we

would finish this work later and his response was, “Ms. Bon where are you going? I

don’t know her.” He was obviously very scared, not only because she was a stranger. It

broke my heart because the look on his face was so frightened, I knew he was in safe

hands but he did not understand. Situations like this show why it is very important to

introduce new faces that walk into the classroom to your students.

I do not think the physical environment of our classroom constrains the

interactions between the students and the teacher. Inside of our classroom the students

interact with the same groups of students that they do in the hallways, during recess

and at lunch. During specials they sit at the assigned tables or floor spots in

alphabetical order, which for some causes extreme behavior issues. Some specials

teachers have grouped the students into groups she thought would work best for her

learning environment. A couple of her groups I took note of and mentioned it to my

cooperating teacher and we made some slight changes in our classroom. For some

reason in music class the two boys that are best friends that I mentioned previously

cannot work together. They both get aggravated when they are paired together in

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music. When I ask them why, they have no response, but once music class is over they

are best friends again. I believe my teacher has made sure that the physical

environment of our classroom does not restrict any learning interactions among the

students.

Part III: The Teacher in School Contexts

There are many days that start off completely rough for my cooperating teacher.

It seems like once one thing happens it is almost like a spiraling downfall for the rest of

the day. She has even told me that she thinks she is too old for this full time job, and her

patience is so low to start off the day that it is unfair for the students. Many times when I

arrive at 8 am she is already so stressed out because one child forgot the permission

slip for the field trip or another child is already distracted. As soon as this happens, her

attention span with each of the students has diminished. She is always trying to play

catch up and when the children start to line up to tell her nonsense things and made up

stories about riding a cheetah to school, I try and call them over to me so I can listen

and help them. I don’t want her stress and anger to be dumped on one of them. Her

organizational skills, in my opinion, are terrible, and she seems to always have lost

something or misplaced a paper. The classroom is very unorganized and I find myself

rearranging our work table every day. I think the unorganized state of the classroom has

really stressed the teacher out and even the students. I always am reminding myself of

the physical, mental and emotional struggles my cooperating teacher went through over

the years of her teaching. At one point she was walked with her whole body hunched

over, and then she had brain surgery and was confined to a wheel chair for three years.

Through all of this she never gave up, she kept teaching and loved her job every day.

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She has a passion for teaching. She is a wonderful educator, and she has taught me so

much so far.

The teacher’s interaction with the students is very important. Teachers should try

and talk to each student at least once a day. I have tried my best this semester to give

each child the chance to sit down and talk to me about whatever they feel at least once

a week. I absolutely love my cooperating teacher, but sometimes she is so busy

preparing and planning that she does not have the time to listen to students made up

stories. She loves and cares for these students so much, and lets them know every day.

As she and I walk the hallways alone we sometimes pass her older students from

previous years. They always go up to her and hug her and try and have a short

conversation with her. She talks to them about how their reading is and how they are

doing in whichever grade they are in. She loves all of her students and even her older

ones still remember her in the hallways. When we pass teachers it is always like a

reunion, all smiles and hugs. The teachers have seen my cooperating teacher for so

many years now, and have seen her through all of her physical limitations of teaching.

Almost always the teachers look at me and tell me how blessed I am to be in her

classroom learning from her.

Running a first grade classroom with twenty-four rambunctious bodies can be an

insane job at times. Being able to stay in control at all times is extremely important. I

have talked to my cooperating teacher many times about classroom management and

how she has decided to run the classroom the way she does. Her big tips to me about

classroom management were: Always keep the lesson moving. She admitted that this

was very hard for her to do, especially this year with all the behavior problems we have

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in our classroom. There is only a certain amount of time for each lesson and your goal

is to get through your mini lesson and the activities that follow in enough time to

complete it and still have students paying attention. Another strategy she shared with

me, that I really notice her doing a lot more, is talking with the students. She

congratulates one student on Monday mornings for winning his football game on

Saturday and another for winning his soccer game. One Monday morning she asked the

two Boy Scouts how their camping trip went. This shows the children respect and

kindness. Her biggest classroom management strategy was to remember to stay calm.

If there is one child talking, singing, humming and tapping his pencil during your lesson

it might be best to go stand beside him or ask him to sit beside you. It works for one of

our children so well. Sometimes when my cooperating teacher is teaching and there is

that one student that is acting up, all I have to do is stand beside him and he sits on his

bottom, hands crossed in lap and mouth closed.

At the beginning of the year I really had a hard time understanding our behavior

chart in the classroom (picture on side). At the start of the day every student starts on

the ready to learn line. They have two spaces to move their clip up and two spaces to

move it down. If they make it to the top they get a bear sticker, which is a reward for

some students. I have learned that the boys don’t really

care if they get a shinny teddy bear sticker. As long as

they stay on the ready to learn line by the time they go to

specials, then they get a smiley face in their agenda

book. If they have to move their clip down at all during

the day they get a sad face. For some of the students it

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is the end of the world if they move their clip down. If the child is constantly getting into

trouble then he/she will sit out at recess and sometimes even be taken to sit in the

classroom next door or sit in the hallway. The moving classrooms punishment has only

happened to one child, and I have been the one to escort him over. He always walks in

covering his face because he is so embarrassed. All the other kids know that he is in

trouble and they cannot help but stare. I believe the behavior chart is set up this way

because the teacher, like she said, “just doesn’t have patience anymore”.

Every morning the entire class recites the big rule to the teacher. Other than that

rule posted on a long piece of lamination, hanging high on the wall, there are no other

rules posted inside of the classroom. Not a day goes by without our class of wild and

rambunctious first graders shouting this out. After we finish saying it all we sit quietly

and promise in our hearts that we will follow that rule. Even though we have to sit still for

the one minute left of the moment of silence it is extremely important for our class to

stick with this routine about the expectations and the respect my cooperating teacher

and myself have for these students.

The way a teacher handles a situation or problem is extremely important. The

teacher needs to remember to remain calm and professional when managing issues

inside of a classroom. My cooperating teacher does not have the mean tone of voice or

the ‘one more time and I’ll’ promises. She gives the students so many chances to start

behaving that it almost drives me crazy. If a teacher is going to say “If I have to tell you

to stop talking one more time then you are moving your stick” then the teacher needs to

follow through with that. Just in the past week, my cooperating teacher has had to take

one child out of the classroom and either into the hallway or into the teacher next doors

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room because his behavior was so bad and she gave him so many chances that she

could not handle it, and the other students were losing learning time in the process.

There have been maybe two times where she has raised her voice at this same student

and it actually made him straighten up so fast that I thought something illegal had just

happened.

Being inside this elementary school with this group of such diverse first graders I

have learned so much about not only how the students act inside and outside of the

classroom but also the teachers. Even though there are the codes of ethics that

teachers must follow, there are not many teachers that abide by these rules. The

biggest thing I have seen in the school is teachers naming certain children to other

teachers. I know which kids in the class next door to me that are having the family

problems, which child is having the behavior issues, and which child did not do well on

the test the Friday before. Just the other day someone came into our classroom during

planning and told us what another teacher was doing with a child, and they discussed

how that teacher is making a monster out of the student. Being a teacher is extremely

hard, and it is even harder when you are having a hard day to remember that you may

want to let out your frustrations and tell someone who aggravated you and what they

did, but you cannot sit there and name children.

Part IV: You as a Student and a Future Teacher

During the time at Lilburn Elementary and while I was planning my responses to

the journal entries, I really struggled with the difference between my opinions and the

cold hard facts I was seeing. Throughout the first few weeks my notes consisted of

many opinions and honestly a few judgmental statements about the way my

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cooperating teacher was teaching. It wasn’t until I really got to talk to her and ask

questions that realized the way she was teaching was somewhat appropriate for the

classroom. Another struggle I had at the beginning of my time teaching was having the

assumption that these children had the support that I had growing up. I have lived in

Gwinnett County my whole life, and I went to a very well known high school. The

community I lived in was very supportive of my schools academics, sports and students.

When I was in the role of the student it was interesting. The teachers were very

open to me about what exactly goes on, how to react, and how to handle every

situation. Every summer I teach at an Autistic camp and it is the best part of my

summer. I am so use to teaching other people how to work with the kids and the

personalities of the children, that when I was having someone else tell me all the

different aspects of the classroom and the children it was a little hard for me not to take

on the teachers role. For many years now I have had the teacher role in the classroom

with the same group of kids with autism, and jumping into a regular education

classroom where I was not in charge and it was not my classroom was so different.

For a couple of weeks I was so stressed with the school work of my Georgia

Gwinnett classes, the work at Lilburn Elementary School I was doing, and the work for

my own job, that I contemplated changing my major. But one Thursday morning I

realized there is a reason I am in this education program. Ever since my third day at

Lilburn Elementary School I have been working with a little boy individually on his letters

and sight words. At the beginning of my time in the classroom he could not tell the

difference between an ‘a’ and an ‘f’. He is one of the boys that speaks only Spanish at

home, so there is a huge chance he does not get very much help at home. Every day

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that I was in the classroom during reading centers I would pull him to a table and we

would work on our letters and sounds, then move onto our sight words. But one

Thursday morning he finally was able to recognize all the letters and he could read the

entire level one and level two sight words. The look on his face when he knew he had

said all the letters correctly was priceless. He looked at me and said, “Ms. Bon I got

them all right. I’m so smart,” (his speech is very low and he cannot pronounce a lot of

words correctly, so since my last name is very hard for him to say so he calls me Ms.

Bon). This teaching experience completely made a whirlwind change in me. His reading

recovery teacher has even pulled me aside and told me that she has seen changes in

his penmanship and his letters. I know I can have this kind of effect on any student; it

was just my privilege to help the child that needed it most in our classroom.

Looking back to my years being in elementary school I don’t remember much. I

remember each teacher I had and how I felt about them. For some of the teachers I

remember some classroom activities we did, but beyond that my memory is small. One

thing that I remember from fourth grade is whenever someone would talk too much in

class my teacher would sit at her desk, pull out her mirror and slap some bright red

lipstick on and pucker her lips up. In the ‘90s this was acceptable, now it is illegal. Times

have completely changed and things are so different than they were when I was in

school. Another memory I have is when I asked my teacher if she lived at school and

she told me her desk turned into a bed. I believed it for a couple years. I truly thought

teachers had no life outside of school and they lived there. They were there when I

arrived and there when I left, so how did they have time to go anywhere else? I of

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course for many years now have known teachers do not live at school. My schema as a

child in school was obviously so different than what it is now.

Part V. Reflection

I have learned so much through the web of connected relationships that impact

classrooms. It is very important for every teacher to have a relationship with each

student. Letting the child know that the classroom is a safe haven and they can come to

the teacher with any questions they might have or any concerns. Not only does the

teacher need to have that connectedness with the child, but also the parents. One of

our students has been diagnosed with ADHD. He is on medication and has the hardest

time in class. Last year he spent much of the year in the first grade principal’s office.

During the parent teacher conferences in October his grandmother came in and told us

that she knows how we feel. She has the hardest time handling him and keeping her

patience with him. The little boy lives with his grandmother and grandfather and they are

extremely supportive in his success and our sanity. Just recently his behavior has been

out of control and he has received sad faces in his agenda book everyday for almost

two weeks. His grandfather emailed the teacher apologizing for his behavior and said

that if there was anything he could do to help out to let him know. He offered coming in

and sitting in on the classroom for a couple days, but my cooperating teacher has not

decided if that is the best thing for the learning environment or for the other students.

Another student in our classroom is on the other end of the spectrum for parent

support. The boy is Muslim and English is not spoken at home while he is there. He has

vision problems which hinder his reading and writing. Letters have been sent home

many times to the parents explaining that he needs to do his homework every night and

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he needs to either read to someone or be read to. For weeks we had no response back

from the parents and no change in the child. In my field notes I wrote down many times

that when the child is asked a question he just looks at the teacher completely

confused. After much struggle of trying to get in touch with the boy’s parents, the father

finally came in for a conference with the principal, the teacher, the reading recovery

teacher and the ESOL teacher. The father told us that he works night shifts and his wife

was home with the kids but she spoke no English and does not know how to read either,

so that was why the letters sent home were unresponsive. After the meeting the father

said he would think about everything that was said. When Friday folder’s went home

and the father noticed the boys incomplete work and work that had been finished poorly

the father called the school the following Monday and said he wanted to get extra help

for his son. We as teachers need to remember that not all parents are supportive, and

even if they are not able to be there at nights to help with their students we have to

remember it might be because the parent has to work. Times are tough and very

different than when I was in school. Many of my thoughts and assumptions on teaching

are completely altered from what they once were before this semester.

What happens in the child’s life at home influences their behavior greatly in

school. In our classroom this year we have had a child come into the classroom sobbing

and hiding in the corner because his mom forgot to wave goodbye to him after he got on

the school bus. We have had a child who has behavior problems go home eight days in

a row with smiley faces in his agenda book because he is working towards earning a

remote control car for good behavior. The way the child is treated at home reflects

greatly on the way the child acts in class. If a child is having behavior problems the

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teacher and the parents can work together on figuring out a way to help the sanity of

both sides and reward the child for great behavior.

The biggest question that has spiked from all of the research and observation I

have completed is; what it is like teaching in an elementary school in a wealthier

neighborhood? An area where the families speak English, the parents are involved and

the community cares and is involved with the schools. Lilburn Elementary School is on

such a different level than I ever expected. I have never been in such a diverse school

before. I have never experienced parents that don’t care about the academic success of

their child, nor have I been at a school where so many children cannot grasp simple

letters of the alphabet. This experience has taught me so much about students, and

their behaviors, lesson planning, teaching, conferences, organization, parents, other

educators, the curriculum, Georgia standards and so much more.

Knowing how to handle the classroom and the students is extremely important.

And for the students to know that you are in control helps. I have heard and seen many

other teachers’ behavior charts for their students and I have witnessed the pros and

cons of my cooperating teachers behavior chart. I now have some great ideas of what I

want for my chart and the rewards and punishments for the students. Giving a shinny

teddy bear sticker is not a reward for little boys. For my classroom I might do a treasure

box system or the play money that not only teaches them budgeting but also saving.

This experience has been an extremely huge eye opener to what my future in the

schools could be like. I have had such an honor at being placed in such a school that

supports me and my future. A school where teachers greet me with smiles in the

morning and a school that other teachers offer to help me in any way they can for my

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school work and projects. Not only have I learned from the teachers, I have also learned

from the students. They have taught me how to have more patience, kindness, and self

control. One student taught me about hammerhead sharks, another about her Bosnian

culture and another about the solar system. They have enriched my sense of humor;

they have showed me the happiness in little things. I will be sad to leave Lilburn

Elementary School but I know that if I ever need help with school or with any life

problems I have a great set of mentors to help me overcome life’s obstacles and end

the day with a smile on my face.

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Sources

Lilburn Elementary School. (2011, October 31). Retrieved from

http://www.lilburnes.org/home.html