This
past week at Bret Harte’s annual back to school night I had a really amazing
experience with one of my students.
Let’s call her “Jackie”. She is
one of my first graders and came that night with her mom, infant sister, older brother,
and older sister (who both attend Shoesmith Elementary). Jackie is a special education student in my
classroom and works twice a day with the primary grade special ed teacher. In school, Jackie is very reserved and doesn’t
speak much. She doesn’t consistently
know her numbers 1-20 and struggles greatly with letter-sound recognition. I work with Jackie one on one in class
frequently and she usually just guesses random letters or numbers depending on
what we are working on. Also, Jackie has
a hard time keeping up with the group even in a non-academic way. She often falls behind in line or can’t find
her square on the carpet quickly while all the others are seated and ready.
However,
what happened at back to school night basically blew my mind. Jackie came in with her family and was
talking up a storm! She wanted to show
her family everything there was to know about our classroom down to what the
icons meant on our Literacy Centers board (mind you during the day, Jackie
always asks what center she goes to next claiming she doesn’t know what the
symbols mean). We sat on the carpet
together with white boards and she played “teacher”, saying things like “write
your letters Ms. C otherwise I’m going to put you up on yellow! (In reference
to the stop-light behavior system)”. She
had personality like I had never seen before, and was bossing (in a play-like
manner as the teacher) me and her siblings about. I was absolutely floored to see so much
verbal communication and sharp attentiveness come out of this student! My mentor and I couldn’t help but remark to
her mother that she definitely does not act like this during school and her
mother was shocked.
After the family left my mentor and I had a
serious de-brief from what we had just seen.
While Jackie was in the class I asked her why she doesn’t talk that much
during the day. She said she didn’t
know, so I asked her if the other students made her nervous to which she
replied confidently “yes”. I shared this
with my MT and we brainstormed different ways we can get her to feel more
comfortable during the day to hopefully encourage her to let that personality
we had just seen shine. We discussed
maybe finding one student she is comfortable around and seating them together
at this “two-person” table we have to use due to the number of students we
have. We also learned a lot about her
family that night and we talked about strategies to get her to gradually open
up and share more details about the people who clearly make her so comfortable!
This is an amazing case, to be sure. And you draw some very insightful conclusions as well. I think it is also a case (in math and perhaps teaching in general) of when the classroom environment is implicitly centered on "knowing" the "right answer" how some students can shy away and seem out of place. It's like being in a foreign country where you don't speak the language.
ReplyDeleteA classroom culture must be centered on respect; however, often overlooked are the power that instructional tasks can have on the environment and message of the classroom. Indeed, you draw a profound conclusion that in order for this student's personality to shine through, and for her to actualize all she has to offer, the classroom thinking must be centered on "process" more-so than outcomes. Of course, outcomes are important, but the emphasis during the lesson should be on thinking, sharing, helping, discussing, explaining, etc., rather than just filling out the worksheet correctly and being done. Miraculously, the teacher does have control over this through not only the "talk moves" she uses, but the instructional tasks that she selects.