Post #1 FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I was assigned a volunteer position at an urban school in a first grade classroom. According to "info works", this school provides ESL services to 85% of its students and special education services to 17% of the students. The school did not pass AYP, "Adequate Yearly Progress" and NECAP testing appears to be substantially below state numbers. These statistics I think, are very relevant to what I saw and heard in the classroom on my first day of volunteering.

The teacher in this 1st grade class was young, friendly enough but not very communicative. As the students came in and took their places, they gave me curious looks. I bent down and gave one a smile, she smiled in return. After a while the teacher introduced me, said I was going to be a helper.The first 45 minutes I sorted papers. The next hour and 15 minutes I helped to monitor the students as they did a reading assignment and then writing.

My impression of the atmosphere overall was one of stress and a somber feeling. There was no morning circle or morning rituals to start the day. There was little humor or joy expressed by the teacher or students. They jumped right into reading groups. Students were admonished to be quiet and orderly or they would lose their recess. They were very good and appeared to do very well at staying on task for their age. The teachers approach to discipline was in negative terms. I heard: " Some of you will not be going to recess today. I hear voices over there. This is not summer vacation yet." Students quietly using their voice to read seemed like an age appropriate thing, but the teacher felt they were making to much noise. I also heard phrase like: "I need to do more testing today, some of you are still below grade level and this is May!" This did not seem like information that the students needed. I felt like the teacher was passing on her stress to the children. Clearly she is very stressed about her children's testing performance. I am curious to experience this coming week in this class and see if my impressions stay the same or change.