First Day (Prompt 1)

I was assigned to be a volunteer student teacher at SGT Cornell Young/Charlotte Woods Elementary school in Providence. My first day was yesterday. I am a reading buddy for second graders in an ESL class (English as a Second Language). I attended school in Scituate which is a bit more country and the minorty rate is less than 5%. It was a huge difference to walk into Charlotte Woods, where some letters on the building were missing, there was essentially one jungle gym and two teenagers were literally getting arrested the next street over. To be honest, a bit of nervousness overcame me partially because I felt out of my element, part because my heart sank for the young boys and girls but also that I wanted to do a great job as a volunteer student.

Walking into Mrs. Clieri's class, however, eased my nerves. She is an energetic, unbelievably nice teacher who made me feel very welcome. The kids were exceptionally welcoming as well. They were very eager to know my name, how to spell it, where I was from, what I wanted to teach, etc. So after a mini-briefing about myself, I observed Mrs. Clieri's return to homework the review. The children's homework was to experiment about what happens when you throw a parachute up in the air and then write what they saw. They were all sitting down in a little circle, if you will, looking up at their teacher, giving her their full attention which I was quite impressed with. The girls, as I expected, were right up front.

Mrs. Clieri is a bilingual teacher who is full of energy, articulation, compassion, compliments all while staying in CONTROL of her classroom that has a significantly higher number of boys in it than girls. Mrs. Clieri continued her lesson (I sharpened the pencils for her and helped set up) about pronouncing words using "PGM". PGM (Phonics Graphing Mapping) is a tool that uses syllables and sounding out letters in order to pronounce a word. For example, one of the words was "infant". First, she sounded out each letter (i-n-f-a-n-t) then the syllables (in-fant). The children were eager to learn and wanted more and harder words to learn such as basketball and hockey. I was beyond impressed with how well they caught on and how much they wanted to do.

Following the PGM lesson were the Literary Centers. Each table (7 tables approximately with 3-4 children at each one) were assigned one activity to do. One table was associating picutures with words with syllables. For example, one was a picture of an insect that had another piece of paper with the word "insect" on it. Finally the syllables "in" and "sect" were there and the children had to match all 3 components together. The language barrier was difficult for me seeing I don't know how to speak Spanish and some children could minimally speak English but the children were teaching me and the advanced students were helping the ones with difficulty. It was just a generally awesome class and learning experience.

After my 90 minutes was up, Mrs. Clieri left me with a positive note and some confidence for next class. She told me she was impressed how I took the initiatve to help her out and get right in there with the kids. The children collectively said goodbye to me at once and all jumped out of their seats to give me a hug at once (Mrs. Clieri said it was normal but I did as instructed by our professor to give them light one-handed taps on the back). I will be attending the remainder of my 15 hours there, every Tuesday (except for their February vacation). I feel more confident about going in and will try to do better every time I go in. I told Mrs. Clieri that any feedback (negative or positive) would be helpful in learning how to teach and thanked her and the children for letting me participate that day.

Overall, I was very pleased with the day and I can't wait for class!