My Placement, New Blog

Ok, so my new placement is COMPLETELY different than my old placement. I am now in a fifth grader language arts and social studies classroom in a charter school. The charter school is internationally focused, which means they celebrate diversity and culture and integrate it into their teaching styles and curriculums wherever possible. In fact, the school is bilingual. Half of the classes are taught in Spanish. The charter school has students from every zip code in Philadelphia! Instead of answering to “Ms. Litt”, (well, actually, my old classroom usually called me “Ms. Lick” because one student misread my name at the beginning of the year and apparently the rest of the class heard him--so I mostly answered to “Ms. Lick” no matter how many times I corrected them) I am now called “Teacher Eve.” I really like the way that teachers have a first name in the school!

My classroom mentor’s (we can call him Teacher Seth) classroom is super warm and inviting! I can tell we have similar personalities because I actually took comfort into seeing classroom signs mounted on multi-colored coordinating paper (blue for writing tips and red for reading tips and so on)! My inner-obsessive-organizer-self almost keeled over with joy when I saw the different types of writing notebooks and the color-coded word-wall. I know I am going to learn a TON from Teacher Seth.

On the first day, my biggest concern was getting to know this new age group. I am used to working with the youngins, the six and seven year olds. How was I going to sound with ten and eleven year olds? I didn’t want to use a lame, condescending tone with them. It seemed like Teacher Seth spoke to them like adults. He rarely yells! I am so excited to observe his style and take on new, less authoritarian nuances!

IF YOU ARE IN THE PHILADELPHIA AREA, PLEASE CHECK OUT GSE! WE ARE HAVING AN OPEN HOUSE NEXT WEEKEND. SEE THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW!