Just How Relevant is Ability Grouping in our Schools Today. This Story Goes Into It In a Different Way.
As a future educator participating in this particular field visit reaction exercise, I was given the unique opportunity to observe and evaluate how a not-so typical classroom structure in special education works in terms of its daily routine operations and its educational and cultural perspectives and objectives that were fulfilled. The school to which I was privileged to visit this special school.
The principal, was most pleased and interested to hear of my field research work that I was undertaking and he gave me full permission to undertake a full evaluation of this unique school environment with my choice of classroom and to come to my convenience. This school pretty much has an open-door policy to anyone who is a teacher education student wishing to conduct research work at the school, which is a welcome experience as everyone who works extends a hearty welcome when you arrive there and is very willing to help you out in any way you want.
I would like to mention that this particular field visit reaction observation and evaluation actually took a series of three separate visits to this unusual school. This allowed me to model a comparative study of three different grade levels and to see how responsive these special needs students were given the different types of teaching models that were used and how the students responded to each of these three methods.
I used all day on a Friday, the end of the school week, since this day was more of a low-pressure situation for the teachers to feel more comfortable and at ease with their schedules and for me to be present with them along with their teaching assistants and to experience a more freed-up atmosphere for the students to feel at ease in how they go about their regular routines of going to different classes and how they utilize their break times and their lunch periods.
The classroom grade levels I visited separately were a mixture of grades. The first classroom I visited was grades 5, 6 and 7. The next class the following week was grades 3, 4, and 5 and the final classroom I visited was grades 6, 7, and 8. These classroom formats were remarkably different from each other, but on the other hand, they shared many similarities, which I will now go into with this summary where this school carries out in serving the special needs of its unique students.
Class time begins promptly at 8:15 a.m. Iona was the teacher I met at first, who was quite friendly and kind and she was willing to cater to whatever needs I had with my field trip visit. She has three teaching assistants with a class size of just eight students, consisting of three girls and five boys of the grade levels of 5, 6, and 7 grouping. This happens to be a very hyperactive group of students. This is the way the classes in the school are typically categorized, since, for instance, say a student who is of the age for the grade 7 level, may only have the ability to complete class assignments given at just the fifth grade level due to their special needs and disabilities and requires special attention.
This class started off its day with a numbers game. The object of the game was for the students to learn to understand quantities of different objects presented to them. These objects included animals as we would often see them in the zoo. This classroom as the other classrooms consists of a very close nurturing environment, which is the reason for the high student-to-teacher ratio base in the highly taxed area of Rockland County. The students hail from all areas of the New York metropolitan area as well as the suburbs of Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties. What is good to know is that all the students in need of special help are entitled to this special educational service provided by this unique school.
There was one particular student, Thomas, consistently showed how fatigued he was during the day’s activities and he was not able to fully participate without falling off to sleep. This is because it was explained to me that he spends far too much time watching television and he is not really taking any quality time out to do any homework due to parental neglect or any other student activity like reading to give him more enrichment as a student. Interestingly enough, many students who come from high income homes suffer from parental neglect. For instance in a classroom which I will cover later in the eighth grade, this student, it was reported to me, came to school every day that week wearing the same clothes and had not taken a shower. He was from a high income home where sadly enough his parents simply had not the time or the effort to spend to make him a more loved and wanted child.
The physical characteristics of the classroom lent to an atmosphere of colorful enrichment with numerous illustrations about the importance of government in the nation and short proverbs and poems of social value and upliftment for the self-improvement of the person as a unique individual of who the student really is as a member of the human family. The next segment of the day was a social interaction period in which each of the students gathered into a corner of the classroom and talked about what they did the night before, or over the previous weekend, or even as going as far as talking about what they did during the recent holiday season. Each child told his or her little story, like there was this student who stood out most to me in the class whose name is Sterling at the sixth grade level. He was relating about his having chicken for his last night’s dinner and then diverted to talking about smelly rabbits and chinchillas at the pet store. He then went on to asking me about what kinds of pets I had at home and then a few minutes later he was able to repeat back to me what pets I had, which consists of a dog, a parakeet and some goldfish.
There was another outstanding girl, Molly, at the seventh grade level, who was talking about wanting to get herself a manicure over the next weekend and then she chatted about getting crispy wings at Pizza Hut that Friday evening.
The next segment on the agenda for the day was a lesson on “Our Government” , which teaches about the importance of learning civics by being responsible citizens in the community. The students then said the Pledge of Allegiance together. The importance of racial tolerance was pointed out where they talked about having respect for both white and black people and other the peoples living in the United States and the world, because New York is now a melting pot of cultures. They also talked about the how a bill is voted on and passed by the House of Representatives and then passed by the Senate. This lesson was interrupted by a student who let out a huge burp and he, Vincent, and another one sneezed and they were reminded about the classroom rules as a discipline plan of “No farting, no burping and no sneezing” in the classroom and they must be asked to be excused to the restroom. They were taught the importance of the Chief Executive, the President and his role as leader in the nation.
This was followed by a spelling test and some of the “brighter” students worked on the personal computers to do their additional writing and spelling exercises. A music class ensued and students went out of the class in a single file to the music room to be with their music teacher. They all sang to a compact disc of a popular Country song as the lesson planned for the day.
Gym class was a part of the lunchtime break, which I believe is a wise use of time in “killing two birds with one stone” objective to get the job done right. They played catch ball to help with their body dexterity. Next this was followed by eating lunch in the classroom. They are given slices of pizza and a boxed drink although there are some students with either dietary concerns or a preference for having their own lunch and they were entitled to do so.
Baking cupcakes was a real treat for the students as they filed into the teachers’ lounge and combined ready-made cake mix into cupcake cake pans and they were allowed to bake for a period of some 25 minutes or so. While the cupcakes were baking, they were then taken out of the oven and then left to cool. The students then played a whispering game. A student teacher by the name of Amy whispered something into one of the students’ ears and in turn this message went around the table in some form or fashion to the each succeeding student, the last one of which had to tell everyone just what was being said, which usually turns out to be something totally different than the original message. There was one student, Evan, who seemed particularly emotionally disturbed because of the whispering and he started crying and he look really depressed. The teacher told him to go to a desk and lay his head down, since they were around in a circle at a table while they were playing this game so as not to disrupt the other students who were having a fun time.
The students then frosted the cupcakes after they cooled around the round table in the classroom and then applied colored sprinkles on top of the cupcakes. We all enjoyed these cupcakes knowing the hearty efforts the students put into them.
It was shortly after this that it was story time where the students gathered into another corner of the room to listen to the fairytale, “Three Billy Goats Gruff”. Amy, the student teacher, who told the story, asked around the circle of students around her about aspects of the story, such as who the characters were, what they said to each other, and so on. When it got to the moral of the story, they were told about the importance of being brave when things may seem to be a little “spooky” and being able to hold their heads up high in times of adversity and carrying on with whatever it is they are doing in spite of a difficult situation.
At was at this point that the school bell rang with the dismissal of the school day. Each one of the students waited for their school bus to arrive and this was announced on the loud speaker as to which number bus had arrived for whichever student needed to board the bus for their weekend to start and then to return over again to a new week the next Monday morning to begin their classroom rules and routine. This day was a real fun situation. Meeting Amy, the student teacher, was great, since she is a college student due to graduate this May and that in itself was exciting to know this fact and to wish her all the best for her future in the classroom as a competent teacher and she had already procured a job in an elementary school.
The following Friday of the next week, I was in Elsie’s classroom, which was full of third, fourth and fifth grades, numbering seven in all consisting of two girls and five boys. You may wonder what is the reason for the much lower number of girls in this special school. This is because biologically boys are more susceptible to genetic disorders than girls are. For instance, boys are more likely to manifest dreadful symptoms of hemophilia, while the girls will only be carriers of the disease. So in this case, it is noteworthy to say here that boys are somehow more likely to suffer from learning disorders such as having attention deficit disorder or some other neurological disorders more than girls would.
Elsie, the teacher, had only one teaching assistant, by the name of Tiffany, who gave the students intense one-on-one instruction and supervision, which I found to be quite interesting compared to my previous classroom observation where the students I observed were more hyperactive in nature. Elsie is touted by the principal as being the best teacher in the whole school and, I must proudly add a graduate of the local college. I was yet about to discover why this was so in her approach in her teaching techniques. What struck me the most was this was an exceptionally quiet classroom, compared to the previous one I observed the week prior. I suppose it was because the students there are older and were more able to articulate their needs and they had more to say exactly just what is on their minds. Elsie skillfully and caringly utilized all the learning techniques of visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning skills for the students’ to benefit from.
Janine, the teacher assistant, who graduated from college, gave out construction paper to put the students’ writing on. They then colored the border around the construction paper. There was the intervention or break from the coloring exercise of the students gathering into a corner of the classroom where they could to talk about what they did previously to coming to school that day or all week as an exercise in developing their social interaction skills as I had previously observed in the other class. There were two other students who wished to be left back at their desks so that they could continue coloring the borders of their construction papers. Gathered around another table in this classroom the students read what they had written the previous day where they had written their individual “thank you” letters to a certain Mrs. Brady, who was a generous sponsor to the school and who had previously entertained them with a puppet show the week before.
Elsie then took out a map of the United States of America and asked the students to point out where the State of Wisconsin is located on the map. She then read an article from “Scholastic News” about “Arctic Foxes” and why they are now an endangered species and what steps we need to take in order to preserve their species in spite of the threat of global warming, which is melting the ice caps and threatening the food chain.
Some of the students were summoned to go their speech therapist to get their weekly speech therapy sessions, while the others stayed behind and did some quiet reading by themselves still around the table awaiting the others’ return. The quiet reading session proved to quite a challenge for them as they were used to being stories aloud and they were in the process of learning how to read quietly to themselves. The two students who stood out the most to me were Lizzy and Mark. Lizzy is a student designated at a fifth grade level and is very helpful to Rose, she is sort of like a little sister to her and is very concerned about her fellow classmates as well and always them questions about how they were doing that day. The other student, Mark, on the other hand, is a very proactive and should I say hyperactive kid, who is very smart and is constantly occupied with something to do like coloring or playing with construction toys, even while the story was being read to the class he was calling out the answers while he was doing his coloring activity showing he was capable of doing more than one thing at a time and showing an exceptional level of intelligence for his age of ten.
What impressed me with this class the most was their goals and objectives, which they, as a class, sought to achieve. These goals and objectives consisted of the following ideals:
Our Dream for our Class
To go to college
Get more girls
Get stronger
Learn more
Be like family
Hugs, respect, friends
Be rich
Make a project for someone
There was then after Rose read the story to the students a relaxation period and snacks were served with background New Age meditation music played, which served to help relax and soothe the kids edgy nerves. Next on the agenda, the teaching assistant, made extensive preparation for the science experiment. She then went on to explain the objective of the scientific experiment. She put different color food dyes into various plastic cups half filled with water. She then added drops of the colored water to some cooking oil, which was poured over the water. I saw that a student, Scott, was very restless and fidgety, and like most boys of his age, wanted to do more of his own thing at the expense of distracting the class routine. The results of the science experiment showed that the color droplets, when mixed in the cooking oil, looked like huge color balls bouncing around in the suspension, very much like those lamps that you can buy to put in your home having colored balls showing in the plastic cups when the suspensions were shaken up with the colored balls bouncing at the bottom of the plastic cups and the oil floating at the tops of the cups. The conclusion of the science experiment that was noted was: Water has more density than oil and oil and water cannot mix.
The day took on a different spin with lunchtime gym. Here, the gym teacher, Don, tried to have the kids run backwards, as opposed to running forwards, as they are usually accustomed to doing. This exercise proved difficult for most of them to achieve due to their unique learning disabilities in coordinating their brains’ messages to their bodies not wanting to cooperate with their active brains because of their perceiving the instructions as misaligned messages.
A saying in the classroom, put there by Elsie, caught my eye was, “If you look to the sun, you’ll never see your shadow.” This, I believe, was the philosophy that Rose actively attempted to instill into her students to give each of them a more positive self image of who they are as human beings by using positive reinforcement.
Then came time for a lunch break for the students to eat some pizza and have a fruit punch drink with the other students eating their own lunch, which they brought along with them mixed with lots of good conversation from around the lunch table in the classroom from where we ate. Rose uses this table as an activity to help students to understand the importance at actually eating at the table as a family unit so that they can derive from this exercise a good dose of self esteem.
After lunch it was story time and students gathered around a couch in another corner of the classroom. Rose demonstrated a motherly image of nurturing children by embracing them as her own children as she read to them a story about the early settlers and immigrants to the United States, starting with the Native Americans, who came across the Bering Strait into Alaska from Siberia many thousands of years ago.
At this point of the day, it was time for the students to do some mathematics. Students were given out math activity books and each student had a different mathematical exercise to complete. This is an example of a heterogeneous class structure as opposed to a homogeneous one, which we may be traditionally accustomed to. Each student was working on a different mathematical exercise at a different level of proficiency. Mark tried to evade doing some math and I was able to “get on his case” to get him started with some math instead of his coloring and doing his own thing, while interfering with other toys every now and again.
It was then time for school dismissal and the students who awaited their buses felt satisfied that their day was over. Elsie was good at giving me pointers on how to get a class to remain quiet by not shouting at the students or showing them how to be irritated or disturbed because they will not listen to you or show you respect as a teacher, which you need to get the job done. She, along with the teaching assistant, were more than happy to have me come back at another time to share their day with them.
My third and final, but by no means my least visit which was to a class consisting of sixth, seventh and eighth graders. The class consisted of all boys in it, which were six altogether. The only girl in this class was absent for the day. The boys, who averaged in age from thirteen and fourteen, were pretty hyped up for that day. This was because they were all invited to a sleepover party at one of their classmates’ homes. Sandy Simon is their teacher and she has two teacher assistants, Heather and Mrs. Wong.
These are a feisty group of boys, who always have a smart remark for every little thing is said or is done and they were always ready to challenge authority, which is just about typical for boys of that age group.
They went downstairs to have a special boys’ meeting with John where they were talking about the transitioning process from middle school to high school as teenage boys. They resented the fact that Heather, one of the teaching assistants was there, but they did not seem to mind, however, that I was there, because I guess I was not being opinionated or holding any prejudgments about them as boys who going are going through puberty period as a rite of passage in their lives. They wanted to use curse words and carry on in a rowdy manner and the told Heather to leave the room. They just wanted to talk primarily about their interest in girls. John asked them about what they feared the most and they replied, “Girls!” Then they were asked about what they most excited about, and again their reply was, “Girls!” I found this to be very amusing indeed as this brought back memories of my high school days. About midway through this meeting, the vice-principal, Lee, had to be called into the room to put order into their meeting since they were getting so out of control that not even Jonathan could do anything about it.
It was at this point that Heather decided that she and I should both leave the room at this point of their confusion and let the boys have their time to discuss their “guy stuff”.
This was then followed by their music class, where the regular music teacher was absent for the day. The substitute teacher played his guitar for them and sang to them telling them about how he has his own band and was about to do some recordings for a compact disc which he was about to have released this coming summer. However, the boys remained unruly, and were largely ignored by both the music teacher and the teaching assistant, Heather, supposedly because it was on a Friday.
Lunchtime gym class was out today for the boys since it was the week that the lower grades were allowed to participate in physical education class that day so they stayed in their classroom sullenly and pretty much just horsed around full of vibrant energy and they wanting to stay rowdy in anticipation of their much long-awaited pyjama party, which was reiterated about time and time again, for later that same evening where they would be able to enjoy much more horsing around with gobbling up their pizza and soda pops.
The students’ lunch time was followed by story time where they were taught some important life lessons, such as:
“People may doubt what you say – but they will always believe what you do.”
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.”
“Respect starts with how you treat yourself.”
“You are the author of your own life story.”
Other quotations worthy of note, which I
copied down from the wall were:
“If there is light in the soul
There will be beauty in the person
If there is beauty in the person
There will be harmony in the house
If there is harmony in the house
There will be order in the nation
If there is order in the nation
There will be peace in the world.”
Chinese proverb
This particular poem on the wall stood out as strikingly outstanding to me in teaching the students love and respect for other living creatures around them, which goes as follows:
“We need another and a wise and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.”
“Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”
The class teacher, Barbara Gold, then put up a Valentine’s Day poster on the window pane to welcome the then coming Valentine’s Day celebration so that the students are made to be aware of this day. She spent a great deal of time with me just simply socializing to show her friendliness and warmth as a person, which is so valuable to have as a teacher, who needs to be filled empathy and good spirits. Heather was willing to share of her experiences and challenges as a teaching assistant having a bunch of unruly young teenage boys primarily, and also telling of how one girl suffers from being in the presence of these boys who are going through their physical and emotional changes, which they understand little of. She mentioned to me that the girl student, Sonia, will soon have to be transferred to another school where there are other girls she can socialize with in an normal manner without being bombarded by boys her age who are going a different stage of their development into young adults.
With the dismissal of school at 2:00 p.m., the students were relieved at last to file out of the classroom one by one to enjoy their much awaited sleepover party and weekend and for them to try and forget about their troubles they had during the and to not be quite be quite concerned about the coming Monday of the following week.
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