Pedagogical Project II: Public School

One day in a public school

Date: November 1, 2012

Timetable: 12:30 pm – 5:30 pm

Year: 1-3

Days before the visit

Before going to the Francisco Miranda School for my observation day, I had a lot of expectation for several reasons: It was my first contact with a public school, it was my first contact with children as a teacher, I had heard about bad experiences in that school from partners and it was a whole day in that school. For that reason, I tried to get information about the school and its students, I visited the school website and started to watch pictures and to read the all the information provided. According with that information, the school was created in 1886, in order to cover a necessity of education for children of families settled in the banks of the river “Medellín” in the areas today called “Moravia”, “El Bosque” and “Barrio Berlín” they are neighborhoods of the “Comuna 4” which are in social strata between 1 and 3. The mission of the Francisco Miranda School “is to help to the training of upright men and women to level personal and academic, so they can perform in higher education or the workforce to contribute to the transformation of their family and society, through an educational process academy with quality, ongoing interaction with the community, support of a competent and committed team and the promotion of values for social coexistence based on respect for others, for the environment care and the community spirit of service.”

12:10 pm – 2: 50 pm

With the previous information, I was ready to go to the School to confront my expectations with reality. Then, I arrived to school on November first at 12:10 pm to meet the teacher Luz María Marín, after a formal greeting, she said to me that she was waiting for me the day before. I had to explain her that I had informed to my teacher about the date on November first a week ago; so she replied that there was no problem and we went to the classroom. Some students were in the door waiting for the teacher, most of them playing and talking. When they noticed me, a little group of students came to me to ask me “why didn’t you come yesterday?” and I said that it was a mistake and that the correct day was that day. The first instruction of the teacher was to get into lines, one for men and other for women, to come in order to the classroom. When I got in the classroom, I observed the elements inside: it was a regular square room, in one wall as is usual in classrooms was the board, the teacher desk, a crucifix and some posters made for students; the opposite wall had a television, a dresser with the students’ books and posters; the third wall was a big window with view to the street; and the opposite wall had a built-in closet with material for classes and the door in one corner. The desks for students were double and that allowed them to interact and most of the time being absentminded. Also that day, according to the teacher there were just 22 students because the day before it was Halloween.

In the classroom children were in complete disorder at the beginning, the teacher had to ask for order many times and had to apply a strategy that repeated three times in that day: she made them to enunciate some rules of behavior in class aloud that they knew by heart: To sit down in appropriated position, to listen all the time to teacher instructions, to raise the hand to speak, do not eat in class, do not drop the wrappers in the ground and finally the most important again to listen to teacher instructions. After that, teacher and students started to recite a pray aloud and immediately they sang a song that they all knew by heart “The owl”. With those activities students were finally quiet for a moment and the teacher profited that moment to introduce me to students. After that, finally it came the time for the class; the first activity was to read aloud a tale “The Lion and the wild boar” and to complete an alphabet soup in the language book. During this activity, students had to read aloud individually and in group several times, however while some of them were doing the activities others were eating, talking and going out to the bathroom without permission, It was a constant all day. The students’ attention was very irregular, and they were focus in activities proposed by the teacher just for little moments. What I noticed was that they were really interested in activities in which they have to participle and they got the attention of their classmates, even the students more mischievous. As a strategy for keeping the order in class, the teacher used several strategies: Activities for recovering the attention: songs and following the acts of the teacher as a game; touching the head of students that did not put attention, assigning monitors who were the students with good behavior, yelling to students constantly and threatening with phrases like: “I will tell to your parents at the end of the class”, “I will do an annotation in the discipline book” and “with that behavior you won’t pass to the next year”. Some students didn’t pay attention to those threats; it was like if they knew that those phrases were lies of if they were not scared of those punishments. Something similar happened with their work in class, the teacher passed by students’ desks reviewing their work in the notebooks and when someone had not the workshop, she put a big note “Atrasado”. But I noticed how some of them tore out that piece of paper.

Rest time (2:50)

During this time I tried to speak with the teacher but it was not possible because she was taking her lunch, then she told me that I could have a lunch with the students. A group of students was very interested about passing time with me, so I shared with them this time and this was really good because I had the opportunity of knowing about their experiences and lives. There were five boys that told me that they lived in the “Bosque”. They started to do questions about English and I said some words and phrases in English for a while. After that they spoke about money, about how much they have each day from their parents as a competition but I noticed that some of them were saying lies. Then, a little boy told me something that really affected me; he told me that his uncle had died and that he had problems to sleep those nights because the image of the dead body was in his head, I tried to give some advice to him saying that it was normal and he had to think about nice things during the nights and soon that bad feeling will be going out; I think that he really appreciated it because all afternoon he was close to me and working in class to show me his work in the notebook. During the rest time, those kids introduced for me the school, so we went to do a tour and they explained what each room was. I felt really comfortable with them and they were very interested in giving a good impression, they were really kind during this time.

3:30 – 5:30

The students’ behavior during this time was similar to the first part of the day and also the correction strategies of the teacher. Nevertheless, I noticed that they were quieter; I supposed that happened because they were a little tired after playing in the rest time. This time was dedicated to learn how to write through dictation and to study mathematics. I was waiting for some of English but it did not happen and I just observed evidence of English in the classroom through a poster made for a student in which it was possible to observe in English some actions of a person in a normal day.

Personal reflection

One day in a public school was a nice experience for me; I realized that being a teacher of children is a difficult labor, but satisfactory because children always answer with love and tenderness. Also, I realized that the theory learned during the teaching program do not prepare us for some situations that occurs daily in classrooms that are just learned through practice. For that reason, I have the following question: Why the students of the teaching program start activities in school so late?

The fact that most of students have bad expectations about going to public school is paradoxical, because as future teachers of public school, we should be happy of doing any activity in the school, so, why is this happening? Respect to the role of teachers in public school, I realized that most of time the teacher was doing comments about students’ behavior and trying to keep discipline in classroom. That situation made me wonder several things: what are the real functions of teachers? How does this program prepare us for those functions different form teaching? How teachers can keep discipline in classrooms?

During this day in the school, I felt that my presence changed the daily dynamic of classroom, because the teacher looked at me when something wrong happened with the students’ behavior, as if she were shamed. So, my question is what are the feelings of a teacher when is observed?

As a conclusion, I think that creating good activities for children is important, because it was evident during my visit that they were very interested and motivated with activities in which they had to participate, and when they had the attention of their classmates.

By Felipe Bedoya and Alejandro Cediel

Observation Report

IE Francisco Miranda- Sección Julio Arboleda

Proyecto Pedagógico 2

The school Francisco Miranda was created in 1886 in order to cover a necessity of education for children from families settled down along the Medellín river bank in an area that is called nowadays “Moravia”, “El Bosque” and “Barrio Berlín”, which are neighborhoods belonging to “Comuna 4 ” in social strata that ranges from 1 to 3. The Julio Arboleda school section is in charge of receiving “Pre-school” and “Elementary” students. Even though, it is possible to find a lot of institutional information in the WEB[1], we think that this information does not provide a real panorama of the context in this school, because it is focused on projects and goals that are not really reflected in the school’s reality. For this reason, we have decided to describe and share some aspects we perceived in our three visits.

The first impression was related to the important places we found near the school. These are “Jardín Botánico”, “Parque Explora”, “Parque Norte” and “Parque de los Deseos”, which constitute an imposing representation of the city. Paradoxically, very close to the school, we can also find “La Comuna 4” which represents the other side of the coin. This place has a lot of helpless families living in humble houses where children grow up among many social difficulties. These children are the ones who are daily learning in the Francisco Miranda School.

This context is characterized mostly by children who are surrounded not only by love and happiness but also necessities and violence. We assume that this situation of duality in their lives could be a cause of indiscipline in class; they do not have clear what is good or bad in their behavior. Maybe in their neighborhood they do not have enough authority and good models to follow. This is why the teacher has to turn into the authority by yelling and threatening them in order to get their attention. What we wonder is whether it could be possible or not that some of them are receiving this kind of authoritarian treatment also back home and what could be the consequences in children raised this way.

We expected to participate in an English class guided by the teacher but it did not happen. The only evidence of English classes in the classroom was a poster on the wall made by students in which some actions of an ordinary day were written beside some drawings that represented the actions. One important aspect related to children’s English motivation was their expectation to listen to some words in English spoken by us and their little utterances they produced to try to speak to us. Through these children’s utterances in our observing and teaching experience, we realized that they don’t have all the reported competences noted in the curricular program for their grade: “Use of every day expressions for describing relatives, participating in word and round games in English, understanding simple questions about family, Describing relatives using the body parts, describing some characteristics of relatives, transcribing and writing some words in English used in classroom”[2]. This becomes proof of a separation between theory and praxis.

The classes observed

We, Felipe and Alejandro, found many similarities in the observations we did in the Julio Arboleda Elementary School which belong to the Francisco Miranda School. First of all, we both noticed that in the classes the teacher uses the board and the chalk as her main teaching resource. She does not use pictures or objects to take students to the understanding of the contents taught in class, denying them an opportunity to approach meaning through a contextualized way. Even though students show to have an understanding of the topics seen in class, they do not seem to enjoy, in most of the cases, the way their teacher introduces them to knowledge. Another strategy that the teacher uses constantly is the attention exercises to keep students quiet.

We could also see that most students misbehave not caring what their teacher does or say to them. The great majority of them spends the five hours of class away from their seats talking to their classmates and/or running around while the teacher yells at them, send them to detention or write a note in the observation book which is the book used to write down all the mischiefs kids do.

In terms of curriculum, we both noticed that the fields in which the teacher focuses the most are mathematics by having the kids solve additions, and language by having the kids read tales and write phrases and sentences either on the boar or in the notebooks. In these reading and writing activities the kids showed to enjoy and liked to participate actively.

One difference that we found in our visit was that on the first one (Felipe) the kids were grounded and had to write a page drill for not paying attention to the teacher. On Alejandro’s visit the kids did not have to suffer the severity of doing such a repetitive work.

It is important to have in mind that the whole day seem like a battle field in which the teacher seems to be defeated. Students go their own way and a different direction should be taken in the classroom in order to make things more accurate for both, teacher and students.

Lesson Plan

English class for first graders at the Julio Arboleda School.

The class will take place at 1.30 on Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

As introducing activity, we will start the class by sitting the children on the floor. Then we will proceed to read them a big book in which we relate each month of the year to a particular activity we Colombians do by that time of the year (Felipe’s creation). While reading the book, we will point to pictures and act actions out so kids make a sound image connection that leads them to understanding.

After reading the story, we will make a memory game with the twelve months of the year. Two sets of the months’ flashcards (Appendix 1) will be posted on the board facing down. Students will come one at a time to face up two of the flashcards. If they turn over the two flashcards having the same month of the year, they will make a point. If the two months are different, the two flashcards will be put facing down again for another kid to come over and try to find the pair. Once a flashcard is turned over, the month it contains will be written below it to make it easier for the following kids to find the pairs and at the same time to force them to read.

When the game is over, student will individually solve a matching workshop that relates the pictures on the flashcards to each one of the written months. This activity will have students read in the foreign language and will help them understand a little more what we do along the year.

What really happened?

Reflections and connections

This experience was deeply enriching for both of us as it was the first time that we were going to a public elementary school to see how things worked there. At the end of our visits we ended up tired and disappointed of the possible future that awaits for us once we graduate as English teachers from the university of Antioquia. We were tired because kids and teacher screamed during the five hour we were there and it was really overwhelming to feel the pressure of this precise situation as a possible job opportunity in our future. We were also disappointed because the teacher did not look happy teaching her pupils and as future teachers we would like to enjoy what we do but under such circumstances we think it would be almost impossible to appreciate the labor of directing kids to a better future.

Though years we have learned many romantic theories related to teaching. In this experience we just saw a traditional teacher trying to discipline the kids she was in charge of. Could theories such as the ones presented by Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Vigostky, Piaget, Pestalozzi, or Rousseau fit in this group we visited? That is actually a very hard question to answer because all their theories are based on liberty given to student so they develop skills by exploring on their own and the kids in that classroom were really active, which makes us afraid of them being free to do what they want. Will they really become responsible in a free based teaching?

On the other hand, the possibility of implementing and taking into consideration Cambourne’s conditions for learning in this specific classroom is thinkable but it could take a lot of time to see results as kids and teacher are used to a traditional way of learning and teaching. Anyhow there are some points in his theory that are more possible to occur than other. These are immersion, because the teacher can use posters, charts, or displays to introduce learning; use, as the teacher could have students utilize their understanding of life to assign the tasks that best fit them; approximation, because kids are not afraid to participate or make mistakes; and response through the teacher’s feedback and encouragement.

Appendix 1 (Set of the months’ flashcards)