School Visit 7

May 5, 2010

This visit took place on May 5, and was just the normal two classes that I usually do. In large writing on the board was “Projects Due Yesterday.” Mrs. Qwerty told me that she would accept the projects up until that Friday for full credit, and after that the students who did not do it will begin to lose credit. The students also needed to copy a portion of the Declaration of Independence, which they needed to memorize, and recite from memory the following week. The passage started with “we hold these truths to be self evident” and ended with “ruled by the consent of the governed.”
I was sitting with “Lee” while he was copying the Declaration. He did not understand any of it, and was content with just copying the words. I worked with him, breaking down the individual sentences, and defining for him the words that he did not know, until he understood what the entire passage meant. I think that it is more beneficial for the students to know what the Declaration of Independence means, and what it is saying, rather than just memorizing the words on a page. This leads me back to Anyon (one of my favorite readings). This is a working class classroom, and the skill that they are learning is memorization. These students do not know how to analyze, or understand anything; all they do is copy what is in the book. Mrs. Qwerty is not teaching these students, she is just having them memorize phrases, regurgitate them back to her, and then grading them on it. I wonder, what purpose does memorizing the beginning portion of the Declaration of Independence serve?
No student presented a project today, so it was straight to bookwork… again…
One of the questions in the book this week was about Nathaniel Hale, who was a Revolutionary War general who went behind British enemy lines, and took the British plans. On his way back to the camp, he was captured and searched. He hid the plans in the soles of his shoes, and they were not found. The British let him go, without ever realizing he actually had their plans. One of the students that I was working with read his name, and that he was a general, and started to copy just that, without reading anything about his story. I told him to read a little more to see what Hale did. After he read about hiding the plans in his shoes, “Lee” was amazed. He thought it was the coolest thing that he had read all year. He kept asking me questions about how he got away, and why they did not search his shoes, and if those plans were influential in the war. The student was excited about this person. I am now forced to wonder, how much knowledge has slipped between the fingers of these students because all they ever do is book work.
In the second class that I was in, a student told me that they got a bad grade in one of their classes. I told I was sorry to hear that. He then asked me if he could still get into classical with one bad grade. This student was worried about his future. This was one of the first times any of the students that I work with has shown any interest in their immediate future. They all talk about one day going to college, or playing professional sports, but in the here and now, most of them have shown a lack luster attitude toward school. This was the first time that one of the students was worried about their immediate future.
At the end of this session, Mrs. Qwerty asked me if I would like to go on a field trip with the class in June, to a place called Exchange City. She explained to me that Exchange City was a place in the city, where students get to act like adults. One student is the mayor, there are bankers, and accountants, and business owners. The trip is supposed to teach them about economics, and the value of a dollar and how the world works. I told her that I would be able to go, and I am looking forward to the trip.