Week of March 29-31
It has been two weeks since our last blog and it has been an interesting two weeks for Traci and me. Last week, we only had two days with the students. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were spent as “in-service” days. Wednesday we had a whole staff meeting, which started out as a “the international is not doing what they are supposed to” from the national team, and the international team replying “no it is the national team who is not doing what they are supposed to.” After we got through that, the rest of the meeting was good. We talked about the different learning styles in Spanish, and then in English. Traci and I ended up passing notes to each other in Spanish during this time. It is not that it is not good information; it is that the different learning styles along with Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences have been drilled into us since day one at Ambrose. We did try to help out when they started doing it in English because many of the international teachers are not certified teachers, so this was new to them.
After the big meeting, the international team went and talked with the therapists that work at the school. The one therapist is the special education person, and coming into this meeting we all thought that we were giving her our lessons and she would help us modify it or give us goals for the students she works with. This is not what happened. Instead, all of the international teachers were told that they are not teaching correctly because they are not spending all of their time with the students who need help. The international teachers tried to say that you cannot teach only one student when there are 19 other students in the classroom. We decided that the reason for this argument was because the therapist focuses on one-to-one education, and the teachers are whole class. Traci and I were so upset because it seemed that no one was listening to the other, so we got up and left for five minutes to cool down. When we got back to the meeting, not much had changed, but the therapist was reasonable about one student. The biggest problem with the second meeting is that the school either has “normal” students or severe and profound students. There are not any in between students to adapt lessons for. The severe and profound students need to have an aid with them at all times because they do not need to learn how to speak, read, and write in English. Many of them need to learn life skills. It is difficult as a teacher to adapt a lesson for a student who needs to be doing other things. I have a boy who is completely blind. He does not need to learn English; he needs to focus on reading and writing in Braille.
This week we only had the students for three days because it is Holy Week. My cooperating teacher was not here at all this week. It was not bad, except that she did not remind me that she was going to be gone. I also did not know what was going on because the week before we received a load of “practicantes” which are practicum students. In my class room there are two of them, which means less time for me with the students. The practicantes took over all of the classes done in Spanish and I took over an English class and a math class. In essence, I taught my students twice this week because of the fact that other teachers also have my students.
Practicantes: why would you put two practicantes in a class that already has a student teacher? The practicantes are good because they serve as aids for the two students I have who do not need to learn English. The worst part about the practicantes is that they rank higher on the respect level than the international teachers. The national teachers treat them better than they do their coworkers, which is ridiculous. It also means that I have just been pushed further down the line. It is already hard enough to get the students to respect you and then to add all of this on top of it. The practicantes in my class room are nice and the students seem to like them, but I have started to see that the students are more disrespectful of me now that the practicantes have come.
Katherine
Katherine has a bit of a different experience than I do. I understand the perspective of the one ‘special education’ teacher since I am myself a special education teacher. However, she was coming at it from the viewpoint that the teachers need to be making more accommodations for the students who need it. This is all well and good except there are times when there aren’t enough helping hands in the room to deal with the students who need the extra attention. As Katherine mentioned, the students at this school are either ‘normal’ or have disabilities that would characterize them as severe and profound. These disabilities include cerebral palsy, blindness or extreme vision problems, a muscular degenerative problem, Down Syndrome, and a few who have extreme behavior/attention difficulties. Not only do the international teachers have to deal with accommodating these students, which, when given somewhat of a guideline of how these students should be taught, is not all that difficult, they have to deal with the language barrier. All international teachers teach the students in English. This is not their primary language and can prove difficult even for the ‘normal’ students. I am willing to offer my suggestions to the other teachers as far as how to work with these exceptional students and plan to incorporate them to the best of my ability with what resources I have during the time I am taking over the class.
As far as the practicantes are concerned, I don’t have much interaction with them. The only time I have really worked with them in the room is when I am teaching Primero de Basica, which is the equivalent to Kindergarten in the States. During the time I am teaching, the two ladies that are in the room help by focusing their attention on the two boys who have severe visual impairments. They also assist when it is time to clean up. In my point of view, in this class, they are serving much like aides would in the states for students with disabilities who are included in the normal classroom.
Although, I can see where this type of situation with the practicantes would be difficult, especially with upper grade levels. The students in the upper grade levels often have an English class. These practicantes don’t speak in English with the students as do the international teachers. Therefore, standards that the international teachers follow to help improve their students’ English are lost because the students have the opportunity to seek help from one of the practicantes who will speak to them in Spanish rather than in English. It would be different if the practicantes knew enough English to speak it to the students when the class calls for English. However, I do not believe that this is the case.
This coming week, my cooperating teacher will be gone and I will be teaching one class a day. The way that my teaching is going to work out is basically co-teaching. Since I do not know most of the names of the students, my cooperating teacher will work on the classroom management part and I get to plan and actually teach the lessons in the classroom. My cooperating teacher is also there to help assist with the students who do need the extra attention in the class. It will be an interesting week, especially leading into when I take over full time.
Traci
