Monday, October 5, 2009

ah

That being said, griping aside, I absolutely love what I do. Today we made our first visit inside our school, to observe classes. While was forced to take a half day in order to head to the food stamps office, I showed up at about noon and was placed into a small room of slightly autistic children. The class itself had only four students, a teach for america teacher, and a few teachers aids here and there helping sporadically with any discipline or focus problems that generally arise with children with disabilities. I must say, that in the very very brief amount of time I spent in that classroom, I absolutely had a blast. Christian, a 5th grade boy afrcian american, is absolutely the least focused kid I've ever seen. Every few minutes he will break out in either a signature Michael Jackson squeal, dance move, or lyric. When asked what his favorite MJ song was, he responded, "I don't like Michael Jackson, I like the Jonas Brothers. I just like to dance." Alex, a 6th grade chubby asian boy has an absolute obsession with airplanes, and draws pictures of them on all his homework and any other media he can find. He draws everything from the cockpit, to the passenger area, to the plane itself. What's curious about these drawings is that he always has the plane's logo written in there somewhere. From United to Delta and anywhere inbetween. He hopes to be a pilot someday. Woody, birth name Lenwood, is a chubby african american 8th grader, who is preparing for high school. He is extremely proficient in math. I watched him finished 7 homework assignments in 20 minutes, that the rest of the boys didn't even finish by the time class had let out. He is also prone to long fits of belly laughs, that are usually spurred on by Christian doing something wrong, and the teachers aids getting mad at him. (For example he stole Alex's tape and tried to frame it on Ms. Munoz, the teach for america teacher) The fourth student Ricardo is also in 5th grade, and is a little bit more challenged then the other three. While he can clearly function well on his own, he does have troubles reading basic english and doing very simple math word problems. It is sometimes frustrating, sometimes saddening, but always inspiring to see these four students interact with their teachers and each other. It will be a sad day on thursday when I will have to say goodbye to that class and be placed into a full blown 25 - 30 student class.

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