Week One - Yale Elementary School

Alright since this post is a little delayed some initial thoughts and thinking has been lost in the mines. So this here will just be an over view of my first week, which was pretty much just me being an observer.

I spent the week at Yale elementary school. Yale has a 58% free and reduced lunch rate for students. The student population is as follows,

Hispanic:	46.57%	(2009)
White, non-Hispanic:	26.40%	(2009)
Black, non-Hispanic:	21.83%	(2009)
Asian/Pacific Islander:	3.33%	(2009)
American Indian/Alaskan Native:	1.87%	(2009)
Multiracial:	0.00%	(2009)

While some of the students begin kindergarten with preschool experience most of them do not. Here I noticed a large gap in the students abilities. Those with parental involvement at home preformed much higher than those who did not.

General observations of the classroom were that students had a set routine, the schedule was posted and the students knew where to be and when to be there. The day was filled with many short activities that allowed the kids to stay focused. Both large group, small group, and independent work time was implemented. The kids would read aloud while the teacher was reading a book. They would start the day in circle and share something that they were looking forward to that day and the things they needed from the rest of the class in order to have a productive day.

The kids had an amazing sense of community and always supported one another. Whenever a student was struggling, another would come over and help them out in any manner they could. At one point there was a girl who was just really having an awful day. She didn't feel like she was cared for and thereby acted out and distracted other students. The teacher pointed this out to the class by saying, "Katie's bucket looks a little low today, does anyone have any ideas on how we can help her fill her bucket?" Immediately five or six students came over and gave Katie a great big hug. The rest of the day, Katie was focused and happy.

This is just a rough outline of some things I noticed. I will follow up later with a few videos from the kids. Luckily I have another week in this class room to gather my thoughts a little better.