Prompt 1

The neighborhood I am teaching in is right between classes. On one end of the street is the upper class and clearly affluent with their manicured lawns and sparkling SUVs. On the other side is where the houses begin to become run down as you head more into the ghetto area. The building itself is quite large. I have not even covered a quarter of it. Conditions of the classrooms run from mediocre to dilapidated but most are decent. There is a lack or non existence or air conditioning or heating however. Spacially the rooms are quite large. The school seems to be rather old built in an old style with high vaulted ceilings. There seems to be leftover space in the classroom that could be put to good use. The school itself feels unorganized. There is always children running about in the halls and noisely at that. Many kids are misbehaving and not being corrected. The kids are constantly running around the classroom which is highly different than what I went through. If a kid were to just spring up and run about the room there would most definitely be consequences.

As for what is valued I cannot say. I have been going for several weeks and what I have seen is a but sad. The kids are constantly herded from class to class which takes up a lot of time. Then, they are yelled at to be quiet and to sit down and start the activity. All of this takes up much of the 35 minutes or so they have for class time. I believe this is not the most practical way of doing things. When I asked one of the girls about how they start class she said to me "We never were told how to do any of this. How are we supposed to know?" This leads me back to thinking of how classrooms should be run. This is what Shor states about it being focal around the teacher and not around the students. I know for a fact, one of their teachers Ms. Porter tries to just get through the lesson. When she told me this it said to me that she is just trying to meet a goal and if a few fall behind it is okay because the goal was met. If I was to say that to her I'm sure she would out right deny it yet it does not seem to be too far from the truth.