Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The Plan

Part of C's teacher's plan was for me to come into the classroom twice a week and work with C during writing time. Today was day 1. Holy Crap that place is a zoo. Organized chaos at best. There is too much going on. It seems obvious to me, but that is the way these days, I suppose. So many stations, not enough teacher involvement. She has little control over her room. This isn't teacher bashing, it isn't for lack of trying. But good lord, there were three to four boys just totally not even caring, doing their own thing, three girls with their little noses so far up the teacher's ass she could barely walk, and then the whining and tattling is crazy.

The basic premise for the classroom, which I understood at the first of the year, is that each table of four to five kids, move from between learning stations together. The day is very planned and very structured, but there is no room for error. There is so much going on and so many stations that the kids who are ahead (it seemed like almost all the girls and a good portion of the boys) would finish and then vie for the teachers attention and then get to do an extra "fun" learning activity. As a result there are kids coming and going all over the place. C can't focus on his own to begin with, God knows how he's gotten this far.I am glad I have been invited to help out in this way, just while I was there I could see that C does no real work during this hour and a half station writing plan. His notebooks were a mess, he didn't even have pencils at one point. But today, with me there he was able to focus and actaully do a good portion of the work.

The second part of the plan sucks. It has good intentions but it sucks. A special "C box" that he can go to during writing times when he gets flustered with the task. To C this means "great, don't have to do that I can go play with flash cards". I am not seeing the silver lining in that one, but will support it. I have to assume I don't know everything here, Miss T knows exactly what she is doing, we're just along for the ride.

1 comment:

Kim said...

Oh my no wonder he must be struggling. Are there too many kids for the teacher to handle or can she just not handle them at all. Thats good you were able to go and help him, but geez the teacher should be able to manage her class.