East Palo Alto Academy Observation 1
I'm volunteering as a student teacher in East Palo Alto, at EPA Academy, for a class I'm taking at Stanford in the School of Education. I have chosen to fill my time during language arts blocks in a 7th grade classroom. East Palo Alto was murder capital USA in the mid-90s and is a very rough neighborhood on the east side of the 101 freeway. Within the comments of this topic is a journal entry I have submitted to my professor for today's class on Friday 2/8/08.
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My first contact with 7th grade teacher Ms. Sofia Moraes was two weeks ago via email. She seemed a very bright and friendly woman, who asked if I minded dogs in the classroom (well-behaved Maya often sits in on her classes) and ended all her messages with a J. As I walked onto the campus of East Palo Alto Academy, I thought it might take a bright personality to keep optimistic here. The cracked asphalt, the rows and rows of portable classrooms, and the barren blacktop indicated a well-worn campus that might’ve seen sunnier days. A short, round woman in a billowing brown dress approached me with a hand extended: “Hi, I’m Sofia Moraes.” I was a little taken aback. First of all, she reminded me of my 3rd grade teacher, who I remember as a woman who was also big on the smileys but a serious disciplinarian. She took that role because we, as 8 year olds, would have probably tormented her otherwise (funny how there is a big correlation between power perception and size). She led me into the classroom, where the image I had of EPA Academy immediately changed.
I had come to campus at on a Friday afternoon, while Ms. Moraes’ class was in P.E. She was leading the first student government meeting of the year, as the officers had just been elected yesterday. I introduced myself to the cabinet members and sat down with them. They were discussing candidates to elect to set up the Valentine’s dance, and ideas were being bounced around as to how the candidates would be selected. One of the members suggested interviews or some sort of application process. I noticed how Ms. Moraes emphasized the students’ leadership role and responsibility in this matter, and shifted the onus to them entirely as to the repercussions of their decision making. After suggesting that some might be offended or hurt by not being selected, she brought up that a random draw might be better. Laura, the soft-spoken but clearly firm class president, decided they’d decide by a hybrid method: applications would be required to weed out those who were not serious about their candidacy, and from there it would be a random selection. I was impressed that Ms. Moraes had deftly avoided getting her students’ feelings hurt, while still maintaining the student government’s sense of autonomy and allowing the president to make a compromising decision.
Friday’s lesson was a block of language arts followed by 60 minutes of free time that the students had earned with their good behavior during the week. The students filed in after P.E., excited and rowdy. I noticed that all but one student (Sam, who is also the vice president of the student government) was either African-American or Hispanic. The students did a pretty good job of quieting down when it appeared Ms. Moraes was ready to begin class, and the one student who continued to jabber past the appropriate time was given “The Look” and quickly quieted down. I noticed also that many of the students helped quiet each other down. I figured this might have been strategic seating strategy, placing classroom leaders with children who had a harder time paying attention, but it also seemed to be a function of Ms. Moraes’ reward system, which entailed adding minutes to the free time block for good behavior. Turns out that many of the students in “clusters” that were leading the “sshhh” charge were members of the student government panel I had just sat in on. Interesting technique to spread them all out.
During the course of the lecture it became apparent that all the students were generally well-behaved, but some of them had attention issues and would wander around the class for flimsy reasons (sharpening a sharp pencil, pumping an obviously empty bottle of hand sanitizer, looking for a “missing backpack”), and Ms. Moraes set them in place sternly, but without retributive discipline, as she seemed to have internalized the notion that her students didn’t mean to be malicious or undermining with their actions. It seemed that some simply didn’t have a great attention span. However, it seemed that many students were also active participants and rapt listeners. Again these students seemed to be grouped with the “wanderers” and the class as a whole held itself together by mutual pressure.
Ms. Moraes led off the session by reading passages from the beginning, buildup, and denouement of a novel and asked for attention. Before she had the chance to ask questions about what she had read aloud to the students, she was barraged with questions. This impressed me a lot and showed that she was excellent at signaling when students should pay careful attention, and also that students seemed to be able to identify the critical parts of the passages. She read a line that went something like, “and that’s when I learned I couldn’t trust those outsiders, those outlaws.” Immediately all kinds of questions popped up, “what exactly is an outlaw?” “what is the title of this book?” “why would someone want to stay away from those people?” I was fascinated and intrigued by how critically the students were thinking.
I kept my eye on two students who seemed to be zoning out a bit more than others, and had to be “snapped to attention” once or twice by Ms. Moraes. Their names were Jorge and Eric, and unsurprisingly they were placed in opposite corners of the room. They were on-and-off: they would either be distracted by/distracting their table-mates or had their heads down in their arms, slouching, seemingly not paying attention. I made it a point to remember to engage them individually when I had the chance – more on this later.
The next activity was introducing the literary device of the “hook.” Ms. Moraes knew that the students had likely had an conceptual understanding of what a hook was, but did not tie that understanding to a specific literary term. I was impressed by her methodical approach to cementing the idea within the framework of their minds in terms of language arts knowledge, as she asked the class, “Okay, this is the part of a story that is located toward the beginning. If it’s a shorter story, or an essay, it should be toward the beginning of the first paragraph or introduction. This is the part that gets you to read the rest of the book.” Students responded with literary vocabulary they’d picked up: “persusasion.” “clues.” “introduction.” “foreshadowing.” When she told them it was called a “hook” there was a collective “oooohh.” Then something interesting happened: Ms. Moraes, in an effort to confirm the definition, said, “Yes, it’s a hook. Now knowing what a hook is, what can you predict about why the author says he can no longer trust outsiders?” This was an effort to tie literary concepts together, that ended up tying different concepts together unintentionally. Immediately someone blurted, “Because the outlaw is a snitch!” evoking the urban slang of one who gives away information about criminal accomplices in exchange for a lighter sentence. Immediately a chorus of “snitches get stitches” rang out, followed by “speaking of stitches, there was a fight today during P.E.” This chatter took a few minutes to completely settle down and it was an unintentional detour in the lesson. Ms. Moraes had effectively taught what a hook was, but had accidentally hit on a common nerve that distracted the class. It was a shocking reminder of the violence that these students face every day, and how much their environment can dominate the forefront of their minds.
The students broke into individual work, writing “hooks” for story webs they had produced last class. These webs were short story ideas based on personal experience – it was obvious some students were a bit more proficient at organizing their thoughts than others. Several times the class was interrupted by a visitor entering the door and needing Ms. Moraes’ attention. The power was out on one side of the portable classroom, which required a number of different technicians and staff to examine during the afternoon. Each time, with Ms. Moraes’ back turned, the students increased their volume a bit and got louder and more chatty, but the ringing bell the teacher used seemed effective in placating them. And each time a student spoke out of turn or inappropriately, Ms. Moraes would ask, “try that again,” and when the student responded appropriately, would praise them for addressing her correctly. It was clear the students knew classroom protocol, and I thought highly of Ms. Moraes for her use of positive reinforcement and seemingly endless patience.
During the individual work I took the liberty of walking around the class and asking to read some of the hooks students had written (Ms. Moraes was being bombarded by students asking for her to validate their work with a praiseworthy comment). Some students’ webs were small, and some were complex with several layers of detail. This struck me as a sign the “story web” was a good assignment: one can make a story web very simple, centered around a single theme, or one can make it as complex as they want by adding more branches to sub-themes and so on. This didn’t need to be relayed to students: they seemed to understand they should try to strike a balance between what they deemed “story-worthy” and a solid level of complexity for their level, whatever that might have been. As mentioned before, I engaged with Jorge and Eric first. I was duly surprised that their story webs were among the most complex and well-written of the entire class. Eric’s ‘hook’ was mildly disturbing: “I wonder if I will ever make it to age 18, because my brother didn’t.” It was clear to me that there were institutional boundaries affecting this student’s focus in school, but it didn’t seem to hinder his natural creativity and intelligence at all.
Based on how students approached the individual work time, it became clear Ms. Moraes had a plan when she arranged the seating. Edgard, who is a member of the student government as Treasurer (whose campaign poster, Edgard 4 Treasurer, is taped proudly on the wall of the classroom alongside standard classroom posters and assignments), took it upon himself to guide his table-mates in writing hooks. A very well-kept, clean-cut boy with slicked back hair and spectacles, Edgard also spoke to me at length about his thoughts with regard to Mac computers. He is a very bright student with a keen interest in technology, and I believe he makes his classmates smarter with his ability to convey knowledge. His success in guiding his table mates validates Ms. Moraes’ apparent strategy.
This was just a first observation on a Friday afternoon after P.E., so I think I got a base understanding of how the students operate in a fairly tough-to-concentrate set of circumstances. Having been a middle-schooler myself once, I know Friday afternoons are tough to pay attention during. And these students did very well – mostly, I think, due to Ms. Moraes’ deft leveraging of her student leaders’ interpersonal skills combined with an overall very high level of intelligence for the class. For remedial language arts learners, I came away very impressed at their level of work.
In the future, I plan to continue working with these students during language arts blocks (Wednesday mornings, a more highly focused time) and Friday afternoons to sit in on student government meetings and for the language arts block that follows.-Paul Yun
Dank
short and round? ouch. otherwise, a quite flattering, astute observation.
Hi, certain me on lisachu
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