May 16th and 17th
Yesterday we went into schools for the first time. I am only at this school for 2 days so I move on to a new school next week. I was paired with another doc student, Brenda. Together we observed 2 students in a Kinder room and 2 students in a 1st grade room. The issues we are seeing include aggression, off-task behaviors, sleepiness (due to being awakened each night at 2 a.m. by a spirit – has seen a priest, etc. Can you say cultural differences??), bi-polar, etc. After having a debriefing with all three consultant teams, we are seeing a trend across gen ed schools (public and private). Teachers do not check for understanding. Student work is only checked if the student walks up to the teacher and requests feedback. Teachers do not walk around the room to observe participation. Basically, teachers teach to the middle or to the high achievers and students that keep up – great. Anything else seems to be viewed as a problem with the students. Teachers blame bad home lives, etc. After meeting with the professors at the university, all of this is making sense. Teacher training is focused solely on pedagogy and not at all on behavior management. We are not seeing rules posted. Students are free to walk around the room – even leave the room at will – this includes kinder. Pencils fly, balls are kicked, students walk on desks to avoid horseplay, etc. Our interventions will primarily be classroom wide supports.
The students had a presentation on dental care while we were there.
Even harder to contend with is that schools are half day. Even harder to contend with than that is that in the morning the building may be called School X and in the afternoon it is called School Z. There are often different principals, different teachers, EVEN different cleaning staff. Therefore, teachers can’t keep student work posted, there is no order to classroom desks, there are no student jobs posted, etc. And there is no form of positive reinforcement other than occasional stickers/stamps and minimal verbal praise to the students that keep up.
I will spend my last week here at a special education school. I can’t wait! The 2 doc students that were there this week told the group today that the special education students sit nicely at their desks, do their work, have classroom structure, are provided with positive reinforcement, etc. All students have IQs less than 60 at this school yet they are better behaved than students at the gen ed schools. Our question now is what is the difference in teacher training between SPED and Gen Ed??
We think the reason we are seeing similarities across gen ed schools is because although there are many universities in Queretaro, there is only 1 teacher certification program. There is no competition. They are all trained the same way.
I have always been jealous of nurses and doctors that can go on medical mission trips. They have a specific set of skills they alone can share with those in underdeveloped countries. I now know that I have a specific set of skills that I can share in other countries too. If we can share classroom management strategies with a few classrooms, it will hopefully have an impact on many students. All of our recommendations will be shared with administrators who are very interested in making positive changes. Perhaps the classrooms we work in can become model classrooms for other teachers to learn from. We hope to train some of the teachers to become trainers of sorts on their campuses. We don’t have long – so we are really concentrating efforts.
Another team of doc students going to the special ed campus next week – the campus I go to the last week – are going to do a forced choice preference assessment and collect data so that by the time I get there, I will have everything I need in place to share knowledge with teachers on how to implement applied behavior analysis strategies with a student with autism. Isn’t that amazing??!!! The school psych students are open to learning something new. They don’t typically do preference assessments, etc. That is the other great thing about this trip – we are learning so much from each other.
Dr. McCormick told me today that she can tell this is my passion. She said I light up when I talk about my observations and recommendations. I do love it. I almost don’t want to go to Mexico City tomorrow. I would be happy staying and working with the kids here. I said almost.
Today I visited a dentist office. I clinch my teeth and my teeth have begun to lose their ridges. The one thing I forgot to pack was my mouth guard. It was fun to experience going to the dentist here to have a new one made. I blame grad school stress on needing it J Here is the office:
My friends went back to the bar where Andrea and I had mochilatas. I didn’t go even though they were so nice to stop by my house and tried to convince me to come along. I needed to work on the results section of a research article, I wanted to work on some homework, and I needed to do laundry to prepare for Mexico City – and most importantly blog. Thank goodness I didn’t go with my friends. My host mom became very sick and needed me to accompany her to the doctor. She couldn’t get air and her heart was beating fast. Her son was not free. She held onto my arm as we walked a few blocks to the doctor. The doctor said she had arrhythmia. Her son came by (muy muy guapo by the way!) to take her to get her heart fully examined. I offered to go but she wanted me to stay and prepare for MX City.
Yesterday we had history class. Afterwards we walked 1 block and toured this beautiful church. Notice how real the figures look. They are complete with hair, eyelashes, etc. Hair used to be donated by nuns for this purpose.
After history class and the tour of the church, we stopped by a 2-story restaurant. We sat on the rooftop. It was amazing and has only been open for 2 weeks. The mango margaritas were made with fresh fruit. YUM
My host mom keeps one vase of fresh flowers in the kitchen. I commented on how much I love roses and that I planted 5 rose bushes at home. Last night when I went to bed I found this in my room. Isn’t she sweet?!
Ryan – I learned that they have an indoor pool here close to where I take Spanish class. My host mom swam there today. I am going to go check it out so you can exercise there with Ras when we come back!!
No comments:
Post a Comment