So, this semester, I was able to observe and help in a 4th grade classroom. But, due to unforeseeable circumstances, I was removed from that classroom. I was then put into a classroom of students who English is not their first language. And one thing that I noticed in both classrooms is that the teacher's are not setting high enough expectations of their students. They are fine with their students to be below where they can be.
For instance, in the 4th grade classroom, the teacher praised and expected a lot out of group A which was the high functioning group. She even allowed them to watch a movie in the classroom while everyone else was studying and yelled anyone in the other group who was distracted. She set the expectations so low for the students that they reached it perfectly, so she was okay with it. I truly think that the best thing a teacher can do is challenge a student to do and be better. Granted, I will give you that there are many different ways of doing this, some of them positive and healthy and some of them insanely unhealthy and negative. But, I read with them and asked them questions about what they read, and they could answer. But she didn't do that with them, she just labeled them as "these student's can't read" in front of the whole class.
The teacher just did not show any respect to her students, I got the impression that she didn't like many of her students. She used fake happiness and "It's so good to see you" around them. It was hard to watch because one of them had to be taken out and walked around. And I was the one who walked around with him and he kept muttering and hitting the wall "She just doesn't respect us, she doesn't even like us, but you, we all know that you like us and respect us. We like you. But I don't like her, she's fake."
The teacher in the EL (English Learners) classroom was a far better teacher in regards to respect. He called his students "my friends" whenever he was trying to get their attention. That alone seemed to change everything about that classroom.
But, I feel that he also set the expectations too low of his students. He told me the first day, "Don't ask them to read anything, because they can't." And I accepted that because he knows much more than me. But, I read with them out of books. While reading to them out of these books, I asked them to read it with me. And when they read it with me, I slowly got quieter and quieter. And guess what, they were reading out loud without any help. And on the exit interview, he told me again that he noticed that I had said a few times "Can you read that aloud to me. And that's a problem because they can't read out loud." I didn't say anything, because he's the expert in this field, I'm not.
But in this experience, I have learned that students can do much more if we only ask it of them. There is a professor's door in the college of education on the second floor that says "My teacher expected me to do better, so I did better" (I think I may have screwed up that quote, but it is true none-the-less.). Students are more capable than most teachers give them credit for, and I hope to recognize and remember that once I get into teaching, because they are me a few years ago, and had I had someone who expected and me to do better, I feel that I would have done better. So I will help students do better by expecting them to be better, because every student has potential.
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