Prompt #1

The neighborhood, in which my school is located, is an urban, bustling environment. The school is located off one of the main roads in the city, and rather close to the capitol. The outside of the school building is made out of big cement blocks, with lots of metal post and beams. To get into the building one needs to ring the buzzer. The school building does not seem to be too big when standing in the front; it only looks about 2 floors tall. But when you stand on the side you can see that there is one floor “underground” and the building extends far back. The name is not posted on the front of the building which I thought to be uncommon. Once inside, the signs are not only in English but in Spanish as well. Immediately I knew that this school was going to have many Spanish speaking students who came from different backgrounds than my own. At first this caught me slightly off guard, because where I am from, there were never any signs inside or outside of schools with different languages on them other than English- or anywhere else in my town for that matter. As I was walking it I noticed there were not flowers or anything welcoming on the outside of the school. There was however, trash everywhere. It kind of saddened me, it was as if no one cared.

When I walked in, I noticed the lack of color right away. It was just kind of bland and didn’t really give off an incredibly welcoming feeling. Everyone I met, including the people in the office were helpful and pleasant, but it seemed they didn’t really want to be there, or at least working in that kind of environment. One even asked me “so are you really sure you want to be a teacher? You can run now.” She laughed but it was definitely uncomfortable. The overwhelming blandness and lack of color of the school made it seem as though there was an immense amount of space. On the first floor, this space was filled with sporadic posters, most handwritten, with positive messages about learning, etc. There were more pictures and information, however, about the man the school was named after. On the other hand, I was relieved that when I went downstairs to the second and first grade classrooms, the walls were full of colorful and vibrant student made pieces of art.

When I walked into my assigned second grade classroom, the word that best describes what I experienced is chaos. The room was just so stuffy. There were piles of things everywhere. The teacher was trying to go over corrections for a previous lesson but she had to yell over all the students because they would not stop talking. She would ask them to quiet down, and they would, for about 5 minutes. Then the cycle started over. But as I spent more time in the classroom that day, and in my visits after, it was obvious that the teacher was making due of, the sometimes hard situation, that she had been dealt and really did care about teaching the students and making sure that they were learning and developing as best as possible. Even the students, as chaotic as the classroom sometimes was, were eager and excited to read with me and learn new things. The teachers and the administration in my school are hard on the children, not out of anger, but rather because they want the student to be looked at as equal to all the other students in this state, on all terms. The community of the school is willing to make the best of what they have, and really, really work towards achieving that goal.