My first day at Wood’s Mill was October, 13 I didn’t know what to expect. I was a bit nervous because I had not done my homework on the facility and simply chose it because of the location. When I drove up and saw that it was in a mobile home, I prejudged. I met Ms. Notice the Lead Instructor who placed me in a class with people ranging in ages from 17 to well over 50 years of age. The instructor who I will call Mr. Snow was totally engaged with his class. During break we spoke and he actually teaches fourth grade during the day at one of the elementary schools in Hall County, and works Tuesday and Thursday nights at Wood’s Mill. He spoke with me about entering the teaching profession, and the things that affect teachers. This night in particular he was teaching his class what appeared to be fourth grade math. He was teaching his class to add and subtract fractions. As I observed the first night, I was shocked that this class was not knocking it out of the park. I have a 9 year old who is about to start adding and subtracting fractions, and I knew that many of these people were parents and possibly even grandparents. I continued to watch two students in particular. I will call them Holiday and Bernice. Both of these ladies eyes were glued to Mr. Snow, it was so obvious that they were giving it all they had, they were asking questions and taking notes, but it was obvious that they were struggling. Holiday is an African American female who appeared to be about 40 years old. She sat in the front of the class, she had her notebooks, pencils, calculator, and everything that a math student needed, as well as refreshments. Bernice who I thought may have been about 25 years old was actually 42 years old. She was a small, petite Columbian female. Mr. Snow introduced me about halfway through class, and informed the class if anyone needed additional one on one assistance, that I would be glad to take them to another class to help them. Bernice immediately spoke up and asked me to work with her. When we went to the lab to work one on one, we started with the rules for adding and subtracting fractions. I then gave her a few to practice on. As I watched her I noticed she was counting a lot out loud to herself. I asked her was multiplication a struggle for her, because she seem to be struggling with getting the denominators to match. She in fact did with her 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s. I tried not to show it but I was embarrassed for her. Before proceeding, she told me she came to America as a high school student. Her school in Columbia had not prepared her for school here in America, according to Bernice. According to Bernice, her mom was uneducated and didn’t know how to effectively communicate with her teachers and …show more content…
Bernice is a strong, and dedicated woman who is working full time, and attending Wood’s Mill two nights a week from 5:30pm to 8:30pm. I applaud her tenacity, and would never want anyone to think less of her because she may not know a numerator from a denominator. By the time she and her family arrived to America she was too old to be placed in fourth grade so she missed a lot of the fundamentals. She missed so much a part of me wants to blame the teachers, and the counselors for passing her on knowing full well she couldn’t do algebra, because she could barely multiply, but how do you cram 9 years of lost education into four years. Even if you do summers and nights and weekends it may not happen. As educators though how can we promote, unprepared students, who are obviously not ready to go on. Did Bernice not have an intentional teacher? According to Slavin “Teachers face a number of difficult, and sometimes unexpected, decisions every day” (p.11) so maybe this was the case, Bernice’s teachers did the best they could under the circumstances, but if her mom barely spoke good English did they get an interpreter, and did she still not understand, I don’t know but a large