Week 2: 20March

1. Week 2: 20March How important is community involvement in the school? This week I was again placed with Middle Red. Last week during the walk-a-thon it was interesting to see that so many parents came along to help with their own children and other children throughout the day. However this week, there were no parents in the classroom. I asked the teacher how parents are involved in the classroom and she replied, well they aren’t really. She then showed me how each student had an exercise book called the “communication book”. This was how she communicated with parents, through her comments and their replies. So in terms of community involvement as of yet I don’t think it is particularly important. During lunch I asked one of the canteen ladies if she had children who went to the school, she replied yes and went on further to say that all the canteen volunteers were mothers who had spare time to help out. As previously mentioned a great population of the school came from Portuguese backgrounds. The general school is made up of families from a medium socioeconomic status. This would impact on community involvement as both parents are more likely to be at work and thus enable to contribute any time to the school. Today I particularly noticed my teacher’s many teaching strategies. For example to get them to calm down/ be quiet, she counts slowly down from the number 5 and expects all the students to be silent by the time she gets to 0. She also told one particular student who was constantly naughty and disruptive to “be her shadow” this meant that his desk was now the closest to hers and that when sitting on the floor he had to sit directly in front of her so she could keep an eye on him and to eliminate temptation for him to muck-up. She also used relaxing techniques such as breathing in and out slowly and played music during art time. Also as a type of incentive each week there is a “champ of the week” award handed out to the student who was most helpful or to a student who’s behaviour had also improved greatly.