My next visit to Boulevard, Mrs. Fagan had a new student
from China. She hardly spoke
English. Mrs. Fagan also had a student
in her class, who speaks mostly Arabic and another one, who just struggles with English in
general. Although these students are
pulled out of the classroom for extra assistance, I feel like that is not
enough. The teacher does not have time
to catch these students up on the material, without falling behind with the other students. As I have learned in "Poor Teaching for Poor Children...", there are people who demand that the achievement gap be closed and to focus on the test scores. The few students in these class are examples of why test scores are useless data.
In Social Studies, Mrs. Fagan taught the students about the
local government and the mayor. The
students learned about the city counsel and the community members, who are
elected to help make decisions.
Petitions, government services and taxes were discussed. The students work in groups on the computer
to complete a "culture gram" or a worksheet on a certain country. The group would find the country on the map,
sketch the flag, find out the population, holidays, currency, language and the
type of government the country has.
In "Teaching in Comics," I remember the
announcements kept going off throughout Ayers' class and Ayers' teaching kept
getting interrupted by the voice over the speaker. Although Mrs. Fagan did not damage the
speaker like Ayers, she still participated in creative insubordination. The principle kept calling her classroom
phone about a student and kept interrupting her teaching. Since so much time was spent on the phone and
took away from her teaching, Mrs. Fagan decided to skip announcements. Typically the students watch the
announcements on a TV screen. She
originally had the TV set up and on, but when it was time for the announcements
she shut the TV off and put it away.
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