Midterm School Observation School “culture” is an important aspect that is often overlooked when thinking about educational settings. Students’ identities are either validated and encouraged or rejected and ignored by school environments that are created by how a school is set up, teacher-student interactions, and many other things. I had the opportunity to visit a school with the purpose of looking for how English Language Learners or Bilingual students were welcomed and represented in that school. By looking for critical multiculturalism and liberal multiculturalism, I was able to see how the school, the teachers, and the students interacted with information of different cultures and how this creates a feeling of welcoming or unwelcoming
…show more content…
The teacher I worked with was Mrs. Roth. I observed her Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) block which was from 8:05a.m. to 10:05a.m. This classroom was for enrichment in reading for all reading levels. This week she had the green reading group and it is made up of bilingual students who are average or exceed reading at the 8th grade level. There are three reading groups: red, yellow, and green. Every two weeks she switches color groups and every other week she switches between English and Spanish for language of instruction. From 10:15a.m. to 10:45a.m., I attended a Language and Literature teacher meeting where the teachers spoke about how to organize their units because as an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, teachers create the curriculum and it has to meet IB criterion and Common Core guidelines. Finally, from 11:35a.m. to 12p.m. and 12:30p.m. to 1:35p.m., I observed Mrs. Roth’s 8th grade Bilingual Language and Literature class which is taught in English. She teaches the same lesson three times a day to three different student groups and each group is at a different learning level. The game of time in this class was for lunch so I sat in with the students for 30 minutes and ate lunch with them. Along with this short break, I was able to wander around the hallways for about 15 minutes. I was not given a tour of the
The teacher I worked with was Mrs. Roth. I observed her Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) block which was from 8:05a.m. to 10:05a.m. This classroom was for enrichment in reading for all reading levels. This week she had the green reading group and it is made up of bilingual students who are average or exceed reading at the 8th grade level. There are three reading groups: red, yellow, and green. Every two weeks she switches color groups and every other week she switches between English and Spanish for language of instruction. From 10:15a.m. to 10:45a.m., I attended a Language and Literature teacher meeting where the teachers spoke about how to organize their units because as an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, teachers create the curriculum and it has to meet IB criterion and Common Core guidelines. Finally, from 11:35a.m. to 12p.m. and 12:30p.m. to 1:35p.m., I observed Mrs. Roth’s 8th grade Bilingual Language and Literature class which is taught in English. She teaches the same lesson three times a day to three different student groups and each group is at a different learning level. The game of time in this class was for lunch so I sat in with the students for 30 minutes and ate lunch with them. Along with this short break, I was able to wander around the hallways for about 15 minutes. I was not given a tour of the