Personal Narrative: My Experience At Spring Ridge Middle School

My first few weeks of placement at Spring Ridge Middle School had been eventful. While working there, I have been a literacy mentor, which means I grade papers and have conferences with the students about their writing. During my visits I am also tasked with other miscellaneous tasks like putting up bulletin boards or running errands for the teacher. The children I work with are an honors English class, in the seventh grade. However, I have worked with other classes my teacher works with in short bursts. As of now, none of my students have observable learning or physical disabilities.
Walking into the classroom Monday morning after Spring Break disrupted the class more than usual. The students wanted to engage in conversation and to catch me up with last week’s activities. However, with their attention on me, they were not focusing on the Brainpop that was happening on screen. Brainpops are two to three minute videos about a literary theme or a classic novel. After watching the video twice, the teacher will give the class a ten question quiz. This week was Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Once the class settled down enough to do the quiz, I sat and observed …show more content…
I have had open conversations about how he just “gets bored and restless” so he will randomly get up to go talk to another student. The student could possibly have ADHD because he meets every one of the basic characteristics: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. Whenever he gets up randomly, the teacher will consistently just shut him down and tell him to sit. She does execute some the tactics to keep students with difficulty with executive function on task. For example, the teacher encourages and checks their agendas, or will break down projects to be small increments instead of big tasks. But, she does not maintain his attention and only reacts when she becomes frustrated with his