Day 19:

During this day, the teacher gave students a mock test and allowed them to work as groups and use their books to find the answers to challenging questions. While students were working on the test, the teacher called them one by one and asked them to bring their projects. The teacher asked each student about his/her project, for instance, she asked about what type of ecosystem their project represents and what animals and plants can live in this ecosystem. Students offered explanations and based on that the teacher graded them, but in some cases, students couldn’t explain in English, and I was the translators. I was thrilled when I observed how my MST was flexible with these students and she didn’t grade them low because they didn’t explain their project in English.

After that, my colleague and I spent time in organizing projects in tables and sticking students grades next to each project because parents were coming to the school for the meeting at 2 pm. When parents started arriving, I was responsible for translating, and it was not the best thing to do, but I gain some experiences about how to deal with parents. For instance, I noticed the way my monitor school teacher talked to a mother about her son attitude and how challenging is he, and I was a little bit surprised because this student was not that bad. At some point, I thought my monitor school teacher had mixed him with another student, but it was not my place to tell her that I disagree with her. From this situation, I realized how having 150 students is stressful for teachers and may lead to such problems where teacher get confused between students especially when they have the same names.

The most important incident that caught my attention today was when a student’s guardian asked my monitor school teacher if she got the medical report which shows that her son has a learning disability and my MST explained that she didn’t receive the report. This guardian was so shocked because the social worker told her that she informed all teacher about her son case while the reality was different. Also, she explained for me how much hardships she went through to get her son medical report, but the school did not cooperate. As a student teacher, I knew that students with special needs have rights to find appropriate accommodations and modifications in educational institutions based on their cases and I shared my knowledge with this mother. Furthermore, I encouraged the mother to take actions because the way this school is dealing with special needs students is a big disappointment.