Colegio Roosevelt (Day 2)

Bienvenidos,

Tuesday May 23rd:

Started the day off by waking up at 5:15 am and was officially the first full day in room 218. I enjoy being in room 218. These students are all unique but similar in many ways. Today, students spent about 40 minutes reading their book for their book club. Students chose the book of their choice within 4 choices and then grouped together depending on their choice. After this, they went to their Art special. They came back and worked on their Weebly. For those who aren’t familiar with Weebly, it’s a website to create your own website. One student showed me her profile and it was great. They start this Weebly from 2nd grade and continue adding things into it up until 12th grade (from what I understood). Just like the student said, “it’s so we can look back and see what we have done”. In all honesty, I really enjoy this Weebly idea for the exact reason the student said. I’m aware that many classrooms create a folder that keeps track of their work throughout the year, however, I feel like many lose touch and end up with few work to display at the end of the year. I think this is something that I can bring back with me and hopefully implement it in my future teaching career considering technology is being upgraded every so often. After the school day was over, my cooperating teacher invited me to join their 5th grade faculty meeting. As mentioned before, 5th grade was working on an exhibition project. Well at this meeting, they had a student present her exhibition project. This student presented on color-blind students and how to help your students. She suggested on different ways to help color-blind students such as using black marker on the boards instead of colors. If you want to mark something important, instead of highlighting, underline or circle the information.

Personally, I think as future teachers, something that should be crucial in the classroom is inclusion. To me, students should feel like their classroom is their second home. They shouldn’t feel scared or uncomfortable inside the classroom. Students should be able to walk into the classroom and feel like everyone is their friend. To me, inclusion is good and is something I hope to implement into my classroom. Inclusion creates a community of comfort, and because segregation is something seen in classrooms, it’s important that every student feels valued.

As many of you might recall, Marquette is big on the idea of diversity. However, personally I’m not sure I can agree. In our seminar, we touched on diversity and whether it’s something positive or negative and honestly, I’m not sure what it is. I do see diversity as something that is crucial, inside the classroom and outside. Students have a voice for a reason, to be heard, to make change, and to be different than their peers and without these characteristics, the world would be the same which would be boring (at least for me). Students learn to learn, and what this mean is that through obstacles, communicating and collaborating, students grasp the lesson. As a future teacher, I want my students to feel like their voice counts and to feel like they belong. It’s important to value all different backgrounds to create a community that is comforting, lively, safe and valued.

Smiles,

Liz