Required Assignment 1

I believe that the teacher who I am completing my required service learning hours is very conscious of the diversity in her classroom and handles it with careful thought and consideration for all different types of students. Just through my personal observations I have noticed that in this classroom the majority of students are Black and Hispanic, only a small percentage of students are White, Asian, or of other races. Also the class consists of mostly females; there almost twice as many girls as there are boys in this classroom. The teacher does a good job of seating the students in an arrangement that they are able to cooperate and converse with different students, not having all the same races or genders in their own comfort zones. I have noticed that the teacher does treat all students with equitably, not having more of a preference for females or Hispanics just because she is one also. The teacher uses many of the methods of instruction that I learned in Introduction to Educational Technology, which really surprised me. Last semester, we discussed in class how many teachers are stuck in the use of old technology and have scared to change and use the many resources that are made available to them at times. This teacher has the students use magazines, computers, television for the students to complete some assignments and even homework assignments. The teacher is aware of the different learning styles of the students; I’ve also noticed that she is a constructivist teacher for the most part. Constructivism is so far my personal favorite teaching style and she clearly promotes teamwork and gives children a situation and has them critically think, do their research, and come up with a little presentation in which they stand up in front of the class and discuss what they learned. The students had a writing assignment recently in which they had to write the standard 5 paragraph essay. The teacher added a twist on it, since five of them set in a group in the class they each had to write one of the paragraphs of the essay and then it all had to put it together. Of course they were responsible for making sure it made sense, edit someone else’s part, and then read their paragraphs out loud to the class. I thought this was very cool and well thought out assignment. This particular assignment was sensitive to all types of learning styles because it helped those auditory learners because they heard other people’s stories and were communicating ideas and thoughts to their team, visual because the teacher modeled the assignment to them before hand so they knew exactly what to do. Using the overhead projector, the teacher wrote portions of the essay and explained the common mistakes that can be made since each student is adding in a paragraph. She explained that they should make sure to stay on topic and that all the ideas connect well together. All the students helped each other out by editing and reading other teammates papers to make sure it was done correctly. Also it helped those sociological learners because it felt encouraged working in a group to come up with a final product and were able to give their input and read their portion in front of the class and get others feedback. The teacher gives the student a sense of comfort by having them work in groups often, and talk in front of the other students. They have started to feel comfortable speaking after a while and hence this promotes an open climate that makes the students not feel scared when it comes to asking questions and participating in class discussions even when they are not required to work in groups. There are still some students that are shy but she tries to accommodate them to the best of her ability. The teacher still requires them to participate in presentations but she is mindful that certain students are not so comfortable asking questions so she makes her way to those students during assignments to make sure that they are clear and have no lingering questions. Many of the behaviors and methods that the teacher uses to tackle diversity issues are discussed also in our textbook such as seating arrangements, using different teaching styles to help different types of learners. I think she does a great job at handling diversity in her classroom, and molding it into something beneficial in the learning process instead of something that can hinder it.