Editor's Note: Rachel Mountz just completed her freshman year at Penn State University Park, studying elementary education. This summer, she is one of roughly four dozen Penn State students taking Curriculum and Instruction 295 A, Philadelphia Urban Seminar, with Dan Thompson, assistant professor of education in the College of Education. Thompson's students have joined hundreds of students from universities throughout Pennsylvania at LaSalle University in north Philadelphia for a two-week, intensive experience observing and teaching in urban schools. Mountz is chronicling her experiences for Penn State Live and the Newswires.
Thursday, Day Four in the schools
We had no idea that we would be welcomed into the schools this morning by many loud, enthusiastic students with balloons cheering us on and telling us how much we rock. I had no idea why we were being cheered on and welcomed with such excitement, but I found out that every year the students of Fairhill Elementary have a teacher appreciation day and that none of the faculty knows when it will be so it's a nice surprise for everyone. The students seemed really enthusiastic for all of us urban seminar students, telling us, "You rock! You are the future!" It was the best way I could imagine to start my day.
Every morning the principal talks over the intercom and gives the school a little pep talk. Fairhill's principal is an award-winning principal, and he roams the school every day checking into classrooms and always has a smile on his face. He seems to be really glad that the urban seminar students are here helping out.
Class started out today with Ms. Morris continuing a math lesson. The kids all have notebooks that they use for math and they copy down and work through multiplication problems in them almost every day. Once the math lesson was over, Ms. Stevens and I took our poetry kids aside and worked more on poems with them. There are three kids we are going to work with closely tomorrow to fine-tune their poems to enter in the contest. Since the theme of the contest is "Celebrating Me" I wrote a little sample poem -- it only took me five minutes -- to help the kids start out. It went like this:
Celebrating Ms. M.
I celebrate me every day
I celebrate me in every way
I like working in my school
I think my blonde hair is cool
At home I help my mom
The dishes don't take long
After school I like to play
Any sport, any way
I celebrate me every day
I celebrate me in every way
Urban Seminar Tip #9: Using a lot of examples will help the kids figure out a good starting point for their projects. They may take some time to put together but it is worth the effort. This little poem I wrote helped demonstrate rhyming and repetition, two things we thought were important for the kids to try and incorporate into their poems.
I worked again with my small reading group and also played tic-tac-toe with a kid who was put in Ms. Morris's class for the morning. Sometimes the teachers switch the kids around to different classes for the morning or the afternoon. I've found that most of the kids will work wonderfully with you one-on-one even when they are disruptive in a large classroom environment. Again at lunchtime Ms. Morris brought some kids up to the classroom to have some quite time-out of the day, and I noticed again how much she really does care about these kids. One of them, Kenny, wanted to dance with Ms. Morris so they went into the middle of the room, danced for a minute or two (it was adorable, I wish I could have taken a picture of it) and he had the biggest smile on his face. Then it was time for his time-out.
I got to meet the superintendent today when I was down in the computer lab for a few minutes. Like Principal Koch, Mr. Ortiz seemed very proud of the schools he runs and was very glad to have the urban seminar students in the schools.
After lunch the plan was to go to the library, but a pipe had burst there so it was closed. Ms. Morris started a math lesson and then turned it over to me. I finished the probability lesson I had started on Tuesday by doing problems from the book and making up some of my own, just to make sure that they understood it all. Ms. Morris took over again once I had finished so I decided to clean up the room a little bit then I looked through a few of the many books that she has for the kids. I'm going to ask her if there will be an opportunity for me to read aloud to the kids one day. I picked two books that I thought looked really good.
Once we arrived back to campus we had another forum speaker, Mr. Carter, who takes care of everything in the schools except for the academics. He talked about how tough urban teaching is and how you have to have your heart in it. He told us a few interesting stories to inspire us and give us confidence for when we enter the teaching world. I took a page and a half of notes on what he said because I thought he was a very good speaker, and the girls I was sitting with agreed. Urban Seminar Tip #10: Keep an open mind. A lot of people might not look forward to hearing someone speak for an hour but the speakers are really interesting, can relate to you and have a lot of good information to share.
The last activity of the night was a meeting with all the other Penn State students after dinner. We talked about things we had observed in the classroom and discussed the qualities of a good teacher. Afterwards, my roommate and I went for another run and then relaxed in the dorm. I'm looking forward to this weekend; tomorrow school ends at noon for an in-service day, in the evening we are doing what they call the Puerto Rican Experience (No one is quite sure what this is but I'll let you know) and on Saturday we have a community service project in the city. Again, you'll hear more on that after the project.
For the full series, visit http://live.psu.edu/story/30949 online. For photos, visit http://live.psu.edu/stilllife/1707 online.