My Community Service Experience

I put my 10 hours of community service in at Passaic. My mother is a 2nd grade teacher in the Passaic Public school district. I decided to spend my 10 hours helping out her students. My mother teaches in one of the worst areas of Passaic. Her students are the children from the projects and other low-income housing developments. Her students are at a real disadvantage. I thought that this was a place I could do a lot of good. My mom has been very sick and I have been going to her school twice a week for the past few months to help her out. When I could not find community service at Arts to do she said she could really use my help. I already knew some of her students.

She told me to come to her classroom twice a week after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She wanted me to help her students who were low achieving and at risk of failing. She introduced me to her students as a "reading buddy". Each day I would meet with at least two children and spend twenty minutes with each child. While this was going on my mother would be holding extra help or detention. My mother's classroom is really rather large. All of the desks are in the front of the room. To the back of the room is a reading center. There is a large carpet were kids can sit and read or little tables along the edges. That is usually were I would spend my sessions with her students.

I would sit with the children and have them pick out a book. I would try to get them to read to me. It was usually very hard for them. I would make them read along with me and sound out the words. Sometimes it was hard to get them to keep their attention on the books we were reading. Since my mother always had a lot of other children in the classroom there was always something else going on.

I really enjoyed helping out at my mothers school. I went twice a week for about two months. I grew attached to some of these kids, especially the ones who I seemed to help. I really didn't want to stop going. I am probably going to go back very soon.

My Day At Arts High School

I spent my day at Arts High School on Wednesday, November 28, 2007. When I first talked to my teacher she seemed really nice and I was excited to meet her. I arrived at Arts at about 8:00 am. I met with my teacher and introduced myself. She told me that she only had class for two blocks of the day. She had the first block of the day free. This was her prep period. As she up for the day I decided to observe the physical layout of the classroom.

In her classroom the desks were arranged in groups of four of five. The blackboard was in the front of the room. The teacher's desk was in front corner of the room. The the left wall had three large windows but they were only facing another wall. The student's work was hung up all over the walls. She had a few poster's with inspirational sayings. All of the work on the walls were from current students. The teacher, Ms. Leon, put one folder at each group of desks. Evey group had a different color folder. Ms. Leon told me that each group of desks were a team. There were six teams; yellow, blue, red, green, purple, and orange. The work of the day for each student were in the folders.

The first class Ms. Leon had was block 2. It was her United States History I class. It was composed of juniors and seniors. The students came in talking , laughing, joking, and smiling. When the bell rang students were still walking around talking. Ms Leon said, "The bell rang have a seat". Some students were still up and talking. It took about five minutes to get all of the students in there seats and quiet. They were then instructed to take out there homework from the night before. Ms. Leon went around the room and checked each student's work. About 30-40% of the students did not have their homework completed. While she was doing that the students were told to do the "DO NOW" on the board.

Do Now: What did the found fathers mean when they said "all men are created equal"


Ms. Leon then went over the do now with the class. The students had responses like "all people black or white or man or women" and they were racist they didn't consider black men, men". After that she put a movie on. She was trying to explain the difference between and patriot and a loyalist to the students. The movie was about William Franklin, a loyalist, and Benjamin Franklin, a patriot. Some students stared intently at the television and other were looking away or talking. A couple of students even fell asleep. She only left the movie on for about fifteen minutes. When she turned it off she discussed it with the class. She then told them to go in the folder and take out the question sheet. She gave them time to answer the questions in groups. She gave them about ten minutes to do this. She then tried to get the groups to share their answers with the class. She had a pretty hard time initially getting them to open up but once then did they all had a lot to say.

The next activity Ms. Leon did with the class required the students to decide weather they would have been a patriot, loyalist, or torn. They were told to stand at the the corner of the room which corresponded with their stance. Ms. Leon then went to different students and asked them why they had decided that way. The students went on for a long time and a lot of participation was going on. The bell rang and Ms. Leon gave the assignment and the class rushed out.

Ms. Leon then had her homeroom class come in. They all sat talking with Ms. Leon until the bell rang.

The last class Ms. Leon had of the day was her World History class. This class was composed of freshmen. This class walked in quietly and sat down. The "do now" was on the board and they were instructed to sit down and start on it. She went around the room and checked their homework. The rest of the class time was spent going over the questions and the article they read for homework. They talked about the effects of Indian colonialism. The class was ready to go and done before the bell even rang.

When the day was over I thanked my teacher for having me. She was very helpful to me. She told me I could come back any time I wanted and if I ever needed help she was there. I really did enjoy my day at Arts High School.

PLC Meeting at Arts

On November 27, 2007 I attended a Professional Learning Communities Meeting at Arts High School. The meeting lasted for about an hour. The facilitator of the meeting new I was a students from MSU and allowed me to sit in with the teachers and be a full and active participant. There were ten teachers present and one was designated as the facilitator.
As the teachers arrived they had to sign in. The meeting took place in a small room, about 15' x 15', around a long oval shaped table. Once everyone was present a meeting agenda was passed out. On the meeting Agenda was the meeting objective and guiding questions.

Meeting objective: To continue to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to develop open-ended questions that will develop higher level critical thinking.

Guiding Question(s): How do we develop open-ended questions so that they: 1) help students acquire critical thinking skills gained from higher order questions; 2)prepare students to successfully answer open-ended questions on standardized tests; and 3)inform instruction?


The facilitator opened the meeting by going through the agenda and explaining what he would go over in the meeting. The agenda item was to review objective and guiding questions. The spent about five minutes doing this. The facilitator read them aloud. The teachers made a few comments. The teachers then when on to task two, Bloom's Taxonomy. A chart including Bloom's Taxonomy was handed out. At this point a little bit of debate broke out over weather or not it was important to give students questions that only cover the first level of Bloom's Taxonomy, knowledge, or if they should try to give questions that cover all the levels. One teacher said, "We need to give them questions that only cover the first level because they need to have something to work up to. You need to be able to answer questions on the first level to be able to move up to any other level." Another teacher said, "Questions that only cover the first level don't show that they understand concepts. They are just spitting facts back," .

After some debate they moved on to the next agenda item, guided reading. A packet of reading was passed out. The packet included several articles. The facilitator went around the table assigning different pages to each teacher. On teacher said, "My pages are the end on an article". The facilitator decided to just have everyone skim all of the articles. The artciles were discussed and then they moved on to what it meas for a question to be open and what makes a question open. They were given questions and had to decide if they were open or not. They then created their own open-ended questions and shared them with each other. The meeting then came to a close and teachers said their goodbyes and went on with their days.

I really enjoyed this experience. I think the PLC meetings are great. It keeps older teachers up to date and gives teachers a chance to learn from one another. I hope the school I end up teacher for does something like this.

Thanksgiving Football Game

Today I went to a football game at Brick Memorial high school. This is a huge game in the town of Brick. The Brick Memorial Mustangs were playing the Old Brick Dragons. This game is played between the two high schools of Brick every year on thanksgiving. It is a huge tradition. When I arrived at the game the stadium was packed. It was not only high school students, but people of all ages. A lot of people I met were Alumni of either school. There were also a lot of families present. I was sitting on the Brick Memorial side. All of the students I talked to said they thought they were going to lose. After a long and stressful game Brick Memorial ended up surprising everyone and won 17, 7.

NCLB

I have been hearing about NCLB since it started. My mother is a teacher and she has been complaining about it for years now. I don't understand how it could stay in place if so many years if teachers are against it. I think NCLB puts the focus of education in the wrong places. Standardized tests have been given way too much importance. I think maybe it may push some schools to want to fall bellow standards to get help. It just upsets me that schools have to be so political. It makes people forget why were really all there, why there is a school. I think things have to improve with the next presidential administration. They can't possibly get much worse.

The History Teacher

Through my research for my inquiry project I have come across a very interesting journal. I am a future history teacher and I find this journal extremely useful. I think it would be beneficial for any current of future history teacher. Almost all of the articles I used in my Inquiry project paper came from The History Teacher. I found their articles so interesting I couldn't stop reading. I even paid for a years subscription.

You can find this journal at:
http://www.thehistoryteacher.org/


You can find old issues at:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/40.2/


I advise anyone who is planning on being a history teacher to at least take a look.

Orientation at Arts High School

I am still in awe of everything I have seen today. I still can not stop talking about Arts and everything I have seen there. My boyfriend could no longer sit and listen to me talk. I have to say Art completely changed any preconceived notions I had of Newark and their public school system.

My Expectations

I have to admit I was not expecting much from Arts. I have spent some time in Newark and the surrounding towns because my boyfriend went to Seton Hall University. I never thought it was the nicest neighborhood. I didn't think Arts would be anything special. However, I was sadly mistaken. Arts High School and its student blew me away. It just shows you that making assumptions is not alway the best thing to do.

My Visit

I was not to sure of how to get to Arts so I decided to follow Dr. Goldstein. When I arrived at Arts I did not think it was anything special. The neighborhood looked nice but the building didn't look like anything special. However, as soon as I walked into Arts, I knew Arts was a special place. We were greeted by students and with friendly and inviting faces and escorted by other students to the auditorium. Waiting in the auditorium had to be the worst part of the trip. It was very cold in there.

After a few minutes of waiting Dr. Brown greeted us introduced the vice principle. We then here from a few teachers and Dr. Brown addressed us again. She truly seemed to love what she does. She took much pride in her school and her students. She also seemed to truly want to help us, as future teachers. I am very impressed from what I seem from Arts. The students who talked to us were also very enthusiastic about Arts. They both stated that they loved coming to school. That says a lot about a school.

I was also impressed with what I saw on the student given tour. We walked through the school and stepped in on a few classes. It was a unique atmosphere, unlike anything I have ever seen in a high school. The students honestly seemed to be engaged, enthusiastic, and motivated. There was full participation going on in all the classrooms I walked into. We walked into a dance class of students practicing a routine, a drama class running through lines, and a history class engaged in a debate. The students were willing to talk to us and answer any questions we had. They were all very helpful.

Reaction

I have to say this is probably the best experience I have had so far on my path to becoming an educator. Arts changed all the assumptions about Newark and urban schools all together. I am very excited to get back there for my first observation. I think it will teach me a lot. I am in love with Arts. I am not even in any field involving fine arts but I would love to teach at Arts or a school like it one day.