Oh Reagan...2/4

I enjoyed this week’s readings because I feel like I learned a ton about planning a unit, and it doesn’t seem as daunting as I initially expected. I am starting to prepare for my first lesson in Ms. Derbyshire’s class and I feel sort of overwhelmed because her classroom can at most times be described as utter CHAOS. As I visit them more, I’m noticing that there are a lot of issues that kind of make me feel uncomfortable in her classroom. First, Ms. Derbyshire has no control of her classroom whatsoever, and what I find odd, is that she doesn’t demand it either. Even in the class where she has an inclusion teacher present, there is still no control (that’s actually the poorest behaved class). I get the feeling the adults have no idea what to do about discipline, and I see a lot of what Alex and Holland were saying about Reagan last semester.

I also feel that the expectations are way too low. The students aren’t pushed and I almost feel like Ms. Derbyshire thinks the students would hate her if she gave any constructive criticism. So everything is “great and amazing” even when it clearly isn’t and much work needs to be done. And the students get away with doing close to nothing…everyday. I just feel kind of nervous teaching a class where the students have no regard for the adults, I don’t want them to think that what is okay with her is fine with me. 

When I do teach them, I want them to learn, so I’m really excited about planning for her classes because I feel like they need so much help, and I want to see if some if the ideas I’ve been thinking about would have an effect on them. The whole class environment makes me think about the Carol Lee quote mentioned in the Smagorinsky text. Because these Latino/a and African American students are expected to be disrespectful, lazy, and confrontational they are treated in ways that do not hold them accountable for any of their actions. I think the students are really bright, why wouldn’t they be? But Ms. Derbyshire seems to be okay with anything they produce in class, which 95 percent of them are not trying when they produce these things. I could not accept what she accepts from them. If they assignment was to create your own play and at the end of the period you present me with two lines, I couldn’t. I’m definitely not going to say “great job”, we’re going to have a discussion about why you only wrote two lines in over an hour.

The other issue is there are students that need a lot of times to complete the assignments, not because they aren’t trying, but because they are still learning English. It blows my mind the things that these kids are subjected to. I spent working with this student (Anastacio) because he’s still learning English and has to think through every word he writes. It takes him about 20 minutes to construct one sentence, and I don’t understand why he isn’t getting extra help. Why are they ignoring him?

You can tell that I’m kind of frustrated, but it’s a good frustrated. There’s so much more I could say about Reagan and Ms. Derbyshire’s classroom, but I just hope I can help the classroom climate and the students while I’m there. They desperately need it.