It’s like the first day of school, except I’m not the
student and I’m not the teacher. I’m like a shadow roaming the halls, a shadow
that doesn’t feel out of place, as if it had never left high school. I wait for
first period to start, Algebra I, and then I am brought to a new classroom.
Navigating a school is a natural instinct by now, but the empty, old hallway I
walk down never seemed familiar. As I am walking into the first class of the
day, I am already caught off-guard when there are only five people in the
classroom.
The teacher, whom I refer to as Ms. Point, doesn’t let the
small class size alter her plans. With only three students and a college
volunteer, she goes right ahead and starts the class, keeping them on track and
focused because she knows her time is precious. Since I am neither teaching nor
being taught, I have the chance to look around the classroom. As I sit in my
chair in a cluster of four desks, as the rest of the classroom is, I realize
that this is not the type of classroom I am used to. There doesn’t seem to be
much color, as the age of building is shown by its dingy, off-white walls and
old, wooden structures. Maybe the room seems dull because the lights aren’t on,
so there is nothing to brighten up the room. Gated windows cover a whole wall
on one side of the classroom, with not just a wooden, three inch ledge, but one
that drops all the way to the floor, that sets a backdrop to the old heater
sitting right in front of it. There is a wooden bookshelf built into the back
wall of the classroom, and a long set of chalkboards down one side, surrounded
by the wood framing that continues to the floor as well. There is also a
wood-framed chalkboard at the front of the room, where the teacher’s desk is,
but this one is covered by a SmartBoard, so the chalkboard itself is
potentially useless, as are the others.
The walls and chalkboards are covered with lots of things,
but not what I am used to seeing in a high school classroom. My classrooms used
to have a few printed posters with shapes and other mathematical diagrams. In
this classroom, everything I see stuck up on the walls is hand-written. The
teacher’s list of classroom rules and consequences is on the wall behind her
desk; large post-it note sheets are sticking on the long stretch of chalkboard,
making the board itself almost useless to the classroom, with the exception of
the list of objectives that the class will be oriented to and a few comments
that go along with recent work that has been done in class on the giant sticky
notes. To the side of it, though, next to one of the two doors in the
classroom, is a Data Wall, where student work and grades hang for students to
view as they are leaving class.
Now that I have figured out where I am, I need to figure out
who’s around me. The teacher walks around the classroom helping the three
students who are already there. There are two boys sitting in the opposite
corner of the room from me, one a “cool white boy” and the other Hispanic. The
girl who is sitting somewhat behind me is also Hispanic, sitting by herself at
a group of three desks. She seems to be doing well on her own because, even
though she seems distracted by the noisy boys who are putting off their work,
she seems to finish her work in a timely manner.
As class time moves on, a few more students start to
straggle in. After almost half an hour from the start of class, we are finally
up to 7 students, most of whom are a minority race, with now 5 boys and 2
girls. The boys seem less focused, maybe not from a learning disability, but
from a lack of motivation. The girl who was on time for class appears to be the
most active, answering the teacher’s questions, asking clarifying questions on
her assignment, and continues to get up and move on to the next task. The “cool
white boy” gets up several times and tends to make side conversation with the
other guys sitting in his group, but he does answer questions from the teacher
and could probably do well on the assignment if he didn’t have those
distractions. One of the boys who walked in late is struggling with the
assignment, so the volunteer in the classroom tries to help him. He seems to
keep giving up, saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but if he took the time
to really figure out the situation, he could probably show a gain in
intellectual thought.
Throughout the whole class, from the second the bell rang
through the parade of late students, Ms. Point stays focused and keeps her
class focused. She has a strong voice that has power and authority in it,
allowing her to control the classroom, but also to turn the class in an
appropriate manner to accommodate the students’ progression. She spends a lot
of the time at the beck and call of the students, but when she has something
she needs to say or do, she’s all over it. She has the power when she needs it,
but allows the students to take the wheel when working individually. It’s a
good divide among the class, and she makes it work well for her and her
students.
Before I know it, it’s time to go back down the old hallway.
This time, it is no longer quiet, but filled with students walking every which
way to their next class. It’s not as crowded as the hallways in my old school
used to be, walking shoulder to shoulder, maybe because these hallways are
wider, but I still need to weave in and out of the people traffic. As I walk
down the only empty staircase in the school and walk outside, I feel nothing
abnormal. It was a high school, not one that I’m used to, and not one I would
probably have advanced in, as I did with my honors and AP classes, but one that
suites the diversity of the students. For the students who are here, this is
probably where they feel they belong – a place where the rooms may not be bright,
but the education is still promising.
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