Jennifer Harrison

Date of Volunteering: September 21
Total Hours: 6

Much to my dismay, when I arrived at the school, and walked into the classroom I noticed a major change. The class had be broken down to two classrooms and “D” was no longer in this room, he had been moved to an EH room. My quest to get to the root of the reasons for his inappropriate behavior (behavior that is inappropriate for an EH student) has ended. The class was reduced by four, leaving six students in Mrs. J’s room.

In addition to the students that were moved out, the teacher’s aide was also not there. The behavior of the students in the class was like night and day! The students were sitting at their desks, actually doing their work, and were in jollier moods. Isn’t it amazing what a child can do, when they do not have someone yelling, and nagging them all day?
Another aspect of the room that had change was the grade level each student was on. The classroom that I volunteer in is a VH room. The students in the class previous to today were on grade levels of K-5 even though they are classified as 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade students. Before I had arrived at the school that day, the Assistant Principle had informed Mrs. J that all students need to be on 4th or 5th grade level textbooks now. She stated that this was in order to raise their Florida writes and FCAT test scores. The problem with this is that now the students are trying to learn and comprehend information that requires previous knowledge, knowledge that would have been obtained if they were to have stayed on their original route. Their comprehension of the subject matter is being completely lost for the lower level students. Lessons took twice as long and left little time for anything besides Math, Science, and Reading. Mrs. J has a huge challenge and confided that she feels as though she is doing a great injustice to her students, but that she had to do as she was instructed. The challenge for her now is to be able to attempt to teach students that are already behind, new material that only two students are on the appropriate level to comprehend. I guess I will see how it goes.