Journal 2

What is the student body diversity and how is cultural diversity recognized in the school?

Diverse is not the best way to describe the student body at Lions Park Elementary. The area happens to be a white dominant area, and this can be seen within the school. Last time I looked at the numbers, roughly 85% of the school was white, while the next highest group was Asians at 7%. Also, district numbers showed that there were no teachers in the district that were Hispanic or African American. This is not something I thought of while growing up, but my schools happened to be the same way. Not once did I ever have an African American teacher, and I can only remember a small number of Hispanic teachers as well. I feel like it could be beneficial to the children if they had a teacher of a different race than their own.


Overall, I had not run into anything showing cultural diversity at the school. I don't want to say that they don't do anything to show this, but I have not seen anything at this point in my observations.

How are children involved in the classroom; how do they relate to one another?

The children tend to work well with each other in the classroom. Luckily, it does not look like any students leave out one another in activities. There are a few kids who can be considered loners, but if they work alone, it is usually their own choice. The teacher asks the students questions and gets them involved in discussions. This is important since I feel that active participation can help children learn. It is much more affective than being in front of the class and doing nothing but lecturing.

How are the needs of students with exceptionalities met in the classroom and at the school?

I have not seen too much in terms of the school as a whole. I know that there are aides for children who need help. When I come into the classroom in the morning there is usually a child (I believe he has autism), and he is working one on one with an assistant. Within my classroom there are a few children that have need that need to be addressed. One student has ADD, and seems to lack motivation to do work (especially once she is out of school). One thing she likes to utilize on the computer is a program called Comic Life. You are able to take pictures and put them into a comic strip. If she does her homework and stays on task, she gets to spend time on the computers and use that program. Another student also has ADD. He mainly just needs to be reminded to stay on task, but is overall a bright child. There is a student with symptoms of autism, yet I don't believe he has been diagnosed. I believe I wrote in the last blog that he gets stressed out from time to time. He gets to go to the gym to vent a bit by doing push ups. Mentally though, he seems capable of doing all the tasks he is given. I believe gifted students have exceptionalities as well. There are two children who are placed in a higher math program, and they usually spend time in another classroom while the other students are doing math as well.

How do teachers and other school personnel work together?

I'm not sure I can fully answer this question. I get there a short time after class begins, and then I leave right before school ends. I am not sure if they go over anything before or after school. I know they have meetings for each grade. There was a big meeting for fourth grade teachers about two weeks ago. There are certain teachers that aide students, and they follow the same schedule every day. It is their job to work together so that a student is not taken out of class at a bad time. Usually there is a teacher who helps with group reading for certain students that comes in during the classrooms reading time. Like mentioned before, the gifted math students also split up during math time.

How does the teacher keep track of student progress?

One obvious way is that the teachers use grades. Whenever students do homework, they get it graded, and certain students have to spend time in small groups going over the problems. If a student spends a lot of time in these groups, it is obvious that they are having trouble with certain subjects. Another was is just through observations. When I go in to observe, the kids start off in art class. I spend about a half hour with the teacher and she will update me on the students and it is obvious that she knows a lot about each one and what they are capable of doing. Another thing that she does is talk to previous teachers about the students. She has told me how certain students improved based on what other teachers had told them. That also goes into the topic of how personnel and and teachers work together.

What extra duty tasks does the teacher perform?

Outside of meetings, I am not sure what her extra tasks are. I know that for the past week she was in charge of getting her students ready to host the school announcements every day, which seemed stressful. Otherwise, I am not sure what her extra tasks are.