School Visit 8

May 7, 2010

This was my second visit where I stayed the entire day. I arrived for the second period again, and stayed for two classes, took lunch during the students lunch, and stayed out during Mrs. Qwerty’s planning period, where she was out of the school. Then I came back at 12:40 for the last two classes of the day. The board for the 8th graders read “*Journals Due Yesterday*, Word Wall, Finish p. 319 (1-7), Do Guided Reading W.S., Ch. 10-4, Quiz Monday.”
The first of the classes that I worked with were 8th graders, in which I worked with two students. These were students who normally do not do well in this class, and I had no problem working with them. What I was not expecting, was that these 8th grade students would be using the same text books as the 7th grade students. The 8th graders were further along in the book, chapter 10 compared to chapter 6, but the book was the same. This may explain why all of the books were in such terrible shape, with about a hundred students flipping through them every day. This also explains why none of the students are allowed to take any of the books home, there simply are not enough of them to go around.
This just makes me curious... If there are not enough text books to go around, then why does Mrs. Qwerty assign the students nothing but bookwork? This does not make any sense to me. I guess it is easier for her to grade, but I think it may have more to do with her being lazy than anything else.
The board for the 7th graders read “Projects Past Due, Exchange City Forms, Presentations, Declaration of Independence Due 5/12, Read pp. 181 – 185, Do p. 185, Guided Reading W.S., Ch. 6-3.” The presentations coincided with a larger project that the students needed to complete, which was comprised of a research paper, a poster, and an oral presentation. I saw only two students present in all three of the seventh grade classes that I tutored in this session. Many of the students readily admitted to me that they did not do their project. After reading some of the projects, I was forced to ask myself “where did these students learn to write?” The writing skills were very poor. Some examples of their writing (this is verbatim): “[about Patrick Henry] during the revolution war he create the stamp act. This all started as him being a farmer.” Another read “Elizabeth kept the household running like clockwise… soon of a later, Elizabeth passed away in 1829.”
One poster in particular was clearly plagiarized from Wikipedia. There were footnotes that did not lead to anything, and words that were clearly links to other pages. Yet I do not entirely blame the students. I heard testimonies from them that they did not know what was expected of them, and Mrs. Qwerty was little help. I know that many of the students have limited resources that they can use to get their information, and it is difficult for them.
It was during this session that I learned about Deficiencies. Deficiencies are given out in the middle of the quarter to students whose grades are a D, E or F. These are given to the students families, so that they are forewarned that their child may be failing the class. I am getting the feeling that a lot of students will be getting deficiencies, but as of now, most of them are treating them nonchalantly.