Visit Two

 

During my second experience at Lakeshore Middle School I was placed in Mr. U's class, consisting of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. I was told that this class consisted of students with developmental disabilities. During the class session that I attended Mr. U was teaching a reading class and had developed a system of three stations with different tasks for his students. At one station he sat with the students individually and reviewed sight words and reading fluency. At another station he had the children at computers on "spellingcity.com", working on spelling, fluency, and writing. I was placed with the students at this station, helping them with any technological issues they faced. At the third station Mr. Underwood had three other UNF pre-service teachers using flashcards with the students.

Overall, I found the learning environment extremely un-conducive to learning. The paraprofessional in the class was more disruptive to the flow of teaching than the students themselves. Furthermore, it seemed as if Mr. U had relinquished his disciplinary power to the paraprofessional, who never had a clear idea of which student was ‘misbehaving'. She would wrongly accuse students of misbehaving and threaten to take away their P.E. time. At one point, the paraprofessional told a student that she didn't like the way he was walking and stated, "I will break you." She proceeded to make him practice walking, "…without acting like Joe Cool."

Furthermore, the materials that Mr. U was using in his lesson appeared far below their grade level. I was shocked to learn that he was using first grade reading materials. At one point, a student who had finished his flashcards, quickly, approached Mr. U about getting higher level material but was told, "I don't have anything else." This lack of age appropriate material coupled with an accusatory paraprofessional proved to be extremely frustrating for the students. They would often mumble to themselves and complain about the environment.

Reflecting back on the experience, I wish I would have had the opportunity to work more closely with the students in Mr. U’s class. Supervising their computer activity didn't even give me the opportunity to talk with the students. Furthermore, even though the materials he was utilizing seemed far below the grade level of his students I would have liked to see if I could manipulate the material to make it more difficult. The other UNF students in my group were given the opportunity to work with the students using flash cards and did an amazing job finding more challenging uses for the materials. Rather than just asking them what the word was, they would ask them how to spell it, the definition and more. I would have even asked them if the word was a noun, adjective or verb.

After collaborating with my peers, they told me stories of classrooms that left them dumbstruck and ready to make a difference. I believe this is the type of situation I was faced with in Mr. U’s classroom. His students have so much potential, I just think they need to be offered a more difficult curriculum and experience different learning strategies aimed towards their needs.