Blog Entry #7

"What are the classroom rules?/How are the materials organized?"

In the class I do my field work for the rules are fairly standard and basic. Things like; Treat others how you want to be treated, always raise your hand, keep your space clean, be respectful so on and so forth. Nothing to out of the norm. She does have a system for when the students break the rules though, which is still a pretty standard procedure. If they break a rule once its a verbal warning. If they break a rule twice they have to go stand outside. If they break a rule three times they have to take a note home to their parents and have it signed, and if they break a rule four times they call their parents right there. I always felt like this wasn't a very good way to handle things because the students probably don't really believe that you will follow through. But I am telling you once they see it happen to one kid in the class they do not want to be that kid that's for sure.

Something that I really like and relate to the teacher I help is how organized she is. Anyone who knows me knows that  I am a complete clean freak. I'm the kind of person who has a label maker and a place for everything. Not only do I have a place for everything, I have a binder that tells me where that exact place is just in case I happen to forget. She may not be quite as organized as that but as far as her classroom goes it is pretty neat and organized. She has stations around the room for every kind of category. Like for example there is an art section and a library section and a magazine section, its just all laid out really well and always kept tidy. Another thing I like that she does is that she switches up the seating arrangment in her classroom a lot. She's constantly moving their seats and their positions almost every other week. She says that she likes to do this beacuse it helps them meet more people and sit next to new people, but that she also every once in awhile will let them pick who they are going to sit by, but that that will generally lead to mass chaos if she's not careful. She, like me, is realy into change and not keeping things boring and normal. She's always looking for new ways to teach, new activies, new anything to keep things fresh and exciting not only for herself but for the students as well.