Ethnographic Project

Family, School, and Environment: How Do They Affect the Student? For this ethnographical project, I observed in a Pre-K classroom at a public, urban elementary school in Birmingham Alabama. I observed in this classroom for a total of twenty-five hours during the months of November and December. During my time, I participated in regular classroom activities, attended lunch and physical education class with the students, and interviewed both the lead teacher and the teaching assistant. The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to observe the effects of the surrounding neighborhood, the physical environment of both the classroom and the school as a whole, and the students’ socioeconomic status on student behavior and ability/desire to learn. The first thing I took note of during my observation was the surrounding community. I collected this information by taking a driving tour of the area …show more content…
There are nine male students and seven female students who attend regularly. During my observation, I did not see anything out of the ordinary in regards to separation of gender. All students interacted comfortably with one another and did not treat each other differently whether male or female. Of course, there were times when female students simply gravitated toward each other and vice versa with the male students, such as lunch time, where they are allowed to sit with whomever they like, but I never observed a student being treated differently because of their gender. When it came to race, I never observed the children interacting with students of any other race. Although one student was mixed ethnicity (Hispanic and African American), she looked just like her other peers, and was never treated differently because of her race. Since the students were all African American and did not interact with children of other races while I was there, I cannot speak on how race may have affected their