New Class. New Outlook

So starting this week, I have been placed in a new classroom. My initial reaction was a little upset because I was growing attached to my 3^rd graders. My new placement was in a second grade classroom where I will be working with Mrs. Meyer. My supervisor quickly explained that Mrs. Meyer is in need on help because she is extremely pregnant (due in just under a week) and there will be a new teacher coming into the classroom. The idea was by having a week or so with Mrs. Meyer and the class, I could help ease the transition when a new teacher was thrown into this classroom. I was happy to start with this new classroom because I new my help was needed.

Mrs. Meyer was in her early 30s and was very interested in what schools are like in the United States. She is a very soft-spoken teacher who is great with students. Several times a day however, she completely snaps and yells at the children. She will again not hesitate to send a child out of class and make them sit out there for a long time. She also comes down hard on the children when they do not finish an assignment or forget something.

I have been struggling with something in the schools. This is the whole idea of differentiation. In each of these classes there are roughly 40 students. Without a doubt some students are significantly more or less academically developed than others. Some students can hardly read while others are ready to move on to advanced books. I have noticed that the teacher simply does one whole group reading lesson….if you understand it, you understand it….if not that you don’t get anything out of this lesson. Where in classrooms back home, it is the teachers job to adjust instruction and assignments to meet the students where they are academically. The teachers here seem to move a pace they choose and students may or may not be with them.

Additionally today, after being in the schools for a week and a half I met the resource/special education teacher for the first time. I got to shadow the resource/special education teacher for about an hour today. She has an incredibly difficult job. Her job is to teach pull out intervention work for math, reading and writing for grades kindergarten through 7^th grade! Oh and she only works at this school one day a week….Are you kidding me?????? One teacher is responsible to do all that? This is why I have never seen her before. She is only employed at my school one day a week and is expected to do all that! I am just mind blown. This comes back to my initial point that students are not getting differentiated instruction at all. Only the low of the low of the low students get to receive pull out help with this resource teacher, but even that help is only once a week. Only meeting once a week makes it very difficult to build off anything.