Observation #1 - The Story of My Observation

On a Thursday morning at around 9 a.m. I approached the school I had set up to do my observations with. I was welcomed in by a teacher who was on duty watching the door, as the camera system was down. I was escorted upstairs to where the main office was and I was greeted by the secretary, signed in and was given a visitors pass. I was then asked to wait until the bell rang before proceeding to my assigned observation room. The walls around the office were covered with plaques and awards, some dating back decades. Before the bell rang, I heard a voice call out my name and my observation teacher greeted me and asked me to follow her. As I had gotten there early (maybe TOO early), she brought me down to the teacher's lounge while we waited for class to begin. The school was an older style, but that made me feel at home as I come from an older style school building. The teacher introduced me to other faculty and staff members, which helped make me feel welcome. She asked me many questions about my schooling and my future plans. She also gave me some great advice about student teaching.
 When the bell finally did ring, we walked together to the classroom that she shares with three other teachers. Consequently, she has a cart that she takes to and from the class each period, because she does not have personal desk space where she can keep her belongings. There was one computer, a desk and a chair for her to use at the front of the room. The student desks are preset into five rows with about six seats in each row. The room is large, with bright windows. However, there was a serious lack of outlets for her to use for electronics because it was an older school. She invited me to take a seat in the back of the room, and as the students came in for class, she handed them a Lysol wipe to clean off their desks. This seemed to give them pride in their seat, which was something I never thought of before. I did not see one student write on a desk the whole class period, which was something that I figured might be common as many of the desks were graffiti-ed. While the students were getting themselves ready, the teacher hung up a the objectives of the day on a large piece of paper. That day she would be assessing them through a quiz. Before the quiz, she reviewed any questions they had and collected their study guides. Some students trickled in later, but she did not draw attention to them negatively and simply set them up with the materials they needed. As they were taking the test, it was really quiet and I tried to stay as still as possible as to not disturb them. A young special education teacher came in toward the beginning of class to check to see if any of the students with learning disabilities needed help. However, after a short twenty minutes, she had to go to another classroom. The teacher came over to me after the special education teacher had left and explained to me that her classroom was made up of about fifteen students, most with learning disabilities or limited English proficiency. As I looked around, I also noticed that the only people who were white were the teacher, myself and one student. The rest were Hispanic or African-American. She said that it was really difficulty trying to meet everyone's needs as well as teach the content some days. A student asked for her attention, and she was helping students for the rest of the period. I noticed that around the room, there were some posters with Bloom's Taxonomy written out like a staircase. There were posters of standards on the wall, as well as motivational posters. I liked these posters and felt that they may help the students understand what is expected of them. Overall, the class was very quiet because they were taking a test, and I wondered what it would be like on another day.