week 3

Ok, so by now you know that my posts about student-teaching are basically mini-novels. Feel free to read or not read- I post these for myself and for the select few who I know are interested in every detail.

Random thoughts, observations, and occurrences from my third week of student-teaching:

Voices
In my class, some students use their voices and some don't. While some teachers of the deaf have strong opinions about using voices, I don't have an opinion on the matter. If the student seems to express a desire to speak, then I encourage it, especially when learning literacy skills. Other students never use their voices, or even mouth the words, and if that's their thing, then that's just fine by me as long as literacy is still being acheived. I work with two boys on guided reading and I address them differently based on whether they use their voices or not. For the one boy who can be very oral, I make sure that he is not just signing the correct word, but he is saying the correct word as well. For example, just yesterday, we were reading a book with the word "hop" in it. He saw the word and gave me the correct sign for it, but I realized he was saying "jump," not "hop," so I had to throw in a mini-lesson on the spot - I wrote hop and jump on a mini-whiteboard and we went over the difference until he was producing the correct sound. The other boy, who never uses his voice and is very ASL, doesn't get cross-checked like this. If he sees a word and gives me the correct sign for it, then that's 100% accuracy on his part.

Mainstream
One girl in my class is going to be put in a mainstream school next fall and I am totally worried about it. She is a bright girl and has good language and literacy for her age but would lose a lot of things that Lexington provides for her - special services, best friends, teachers who recognize that she has anxiety issues. Having a severe hearing loss and being thrown into a larger classroom with an interpreter and a teacher who won't understand her needs as well...it just seems like a step backward. The interesting thing is that her parents are both deaf as well, but her mother attended a mainstream school when she was growing up and wants her children (three of them, all deaf) to attend mainstream school too. I am not this girl's mom and ultimately, nobody should ever judge another person's parenting style but it's just...tough. I'm realizing each day that this is not an office job where I can choose to be friends with my co-workers or to keep my work and my personal life separate. I will work with these little children every day and will care about them and have my concerns about them and it will be hard for me sometimes that the parents have the ultimate say. But if I tried to disconnect myself and not care...then I wouldn't be fit for the job in the first place, right?

"American-ized"
The little girl from Bangladesh is so fascinating to work with. She is so smart and motivated but her lack of language makes me wonder and think about so many things that we really take for granted. Yesterday, four of the eight students were absent and because it was the Friday before a week-long break, things were a little lax and off-schedule. At the end of the day, the three boys had speech session, so they packed up their bags and left the classroom. The little girl started to pack up her things too but we tried to explain to her that it wasn't time to go home yet. Since it was just her, she could do whatever she wanted - read, draw, play a game. Yet her face looked alarmed and frustrated as she kept pointing to the window and signing "home, home." I pointed to the clock and tried to show her that when the minute-hand moved from the 2 to the 6, then she could go home. She didn't understand me and was growing more exasperated. Finally my CT took her next door to show her that the boys were in speech and hadn't actually left the school yet. The look of relief on her face was a big one. Can you imagine what she was thinking? She thought school was over for the day, had no idea why she was being held alone, and she may have even wondered if she was ever going to see her Mom and Dad again. It is moments like these that shed light on how important language and communication is and how all I want to do is make sure that every student has access to some sort of language whether it is spoken language or sign language.

Also, though, this little girl, who is so sweet and just wants to be recognized and told "Good work!" all the time, is starting to show a little defiance. Just this week, we saw her rolling her eyes at other students, trying to boss them around with gestures, indicating that they need to not sit so close to her, etc. It came on so suddenly and we think she is picking up on the vibes and actions of the other students in the class who, and I say this lovingly, can be little jerks! I pointed out this observation to my CT and she said, "I know! It's so sad, I keep saying that I don't want her to become American-ized." Is that an American thing? To not be 100% obedient in school? That's a whole other conversation that could be had, but it's certainly interesting to think about. Also interesting is the idea of socialization cues that I'm observing in this little girl's experience in school.

History Snafu:
On a lighter note, something funny happened yesterday. I told you I have been working on a Black History Month unit with the kids and we are making an ABC book for the school project fair at the end of the month. Yesterday was the last day. For the letter X, I taught the kids about Malcolm X (in appropriate explanations for six- and seven-year-olds) and based my lesson on the slide that my CT had made. She made all the slides - just found the pictures, wrote a one-sentence blurb underneath, and put them in order so I could flip through each letter of the alphabet on the Smartboard throughout the unit. While teaching, my back was to the Smartboard but I still recognized the picture of Malcolm X as the famous one that I had seen many times before. Later in the day, during prep period, the teacher's assistant went to go print out the final pictures for the ABC book and came back laughing. "Guys," she said, "I was looking at this picture and I realized....it's not Malcolm X." My teacher and I both looked at each other and then back and her and I said, "Yes, it is. That's like, his most famous picture." She laughed again. "No, but look at this picture again." The second she held it up right in front of my face, I realized our blunder. While I thought we had been using this picture,

we had, in fact, been using this picture:

Looking at it now, I'm pretty flabbergasted as to how we missed it. The face in the second picture is clearly not Malcolm X's, but rather, a face that I know too well and one that we had just gone over last week for the letter B! I guess I never really looked at the picture during my lesson. Maybe this is a little lesson about being 100% present and aware during my teaching lessons? I don't know. Either way, I'm glad the teacher's assistant caught the mistake before we presented this picture as Malcolm X to the entire school!

If only it were that easy...
A funny/cute moment: On Monday, my supervisor from school came in to observe me for the first time (she will observe me five times in total). Afterward, we had a brief conference and then I went back to the kids while my supervisor and CT continued to talk. One of the girls asked me "you do good work she say she?" ("Did she say you did a good job?"). I told her yes and she immediately got wide-eyed and exclaimed, in signed English, "Finally you can become a teacher now!" 



So there you have it. Next week, I have a break from student-teaching but will be planning furiously for the beginning of my new math lesson as well as continuing to run guided reading lessons, grammar lessons, and spelling lessons. In about two and a half weeks I take over science lessons. That's one I'm scared for. I'll just not think about that one for now.