Observation

During my service learning, I made an observation of a fourth and fifth grade class at Miller Valley Elementary school. These are around the grades I am hoping to teach after college. In my observations, I saw that these students are very unruly; they do not listen to the teacher, and can very easily become rambunctious. When one student starts to make jokes, or act up, the people around him tend to do the same thing. I believe this is because they don’t want to show weakness and want to be equal with the “cool” kids in class.

I found this to be different than what I expected to see in the fourth and fifth grade classes. I expected to see the students respect the teachers and listen. I knew that there would be one or two people in each grade that would be one or two that would cause trouble, but I did not expect all of the students to follow them in suit. I also noticed that when I took part in helping out the class and out at recess, they listened to me and were very quiet when I talked. This could be because I am a male and tall and they fear and respect me or it could be that they don’t really know me, so they respect me.

I am hoping that when I become a teacher, my students respect me and can be controlled easily. If not, I will then need to learn how to handle them. I also observed that I will need to work on multi tasking. The teacher was able to keep the kids under control enough have prepared them for a test. She also got them to calm down to take a test. I will need to observe more teaching to understand how to do this. The good news is that I have at least three years to observe teaching.