As a student observer at Booker T. Washington, I’ve had ample opportunities to observe teachers and their interactions with their students. Most notably, I’ve spent plenty of time watching teachers instruct their pupils. The incident that is foremost recollected is one day last week. During this class, many different subjects are touched upon from math to science, even reading and occasionally music. Thus, it is imperative for the teacher to be able to coherently and efficiently teach all subject matters. The cross-categorical class is also bilingual. As a result, the teacher must effectively teach the subjects in two languages. This is an overwhelming feat for anyone let alone one teacher instructing twenty to thirty students on any given day.
On this particular day, the teacher’s objective was to improve a fifth grader’s level of fluency in English. The pupil is schedule to come in for only 30 minutes or so in order to read books printed in English. The teacher started the one-on-one lesson by sitting with her pupil and asking the student to read a book about different animals found in the jungle. The student started the reading by reading each page out loud. Anytime the student mispronounced a word, the teacher would gently stop the student and ask her to repeat the word until the student pronounced it correctly. What I found very interesting in this lesson was the teacher’s emphasis on not only pronunciation but inflection as well. While reading a question about elephants and where they slept, the student failed to inflect properly at the end. Instead of raising the tone of her voice to infer questioning, she ended the sentence with a monotone inflection. The teacher immediately stopped the student, and in Spanish, asked her to repeat the sentence. She gave specific instruction on how to inflect the question with the appropriate tone. She even asked the question with proper inflection in order to help the student imitate the sound. When the student couldn’t imitate it on the second try, the teacher then repeated the sentence again in English and then backed up her example with Spanish instructions. While instructing the student, she made sure to fully explain the difference between a question and a statement. She gave audible examples of each in order for the student to properly understand the difference. I feel because of this effort by the teacher, the lesson was achieved. By the end of the session, the student had mastered the ability to inflect correctly at the end of a sentence.
Yet another observation I’ve made note of is the progress of additional student in the same classroom. This student is a young male from Guatemala and when I first started his reading fluency was quite poor. He also had trouble focusing on his lessons and when frustrated would act out aggressively. However, during this last observation I noticed that his reading level had greatly improved as well as his writing. He was also much calmer and followed directions amazingly. Although by the end of the day he was eager to leave and was very antsy, his overall demeanor still seemed much different in comparison to my first observation of him. One interesting technique the teacher implements in regard to this student is a daily measurement of his ability to follow directions, his coursework schedule, his timeliness, and his effort. After each session with him, the teacher goes over each area and asks him to evaluate whether or not he has implemented all of these standards. I feel this gives the student time to self-reflect and it also allows the teacher to constructively advise the student in areas he needs to improve.
