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Model Resources Classroom in Dual Immersion Neighborhood
I don't generally like to glom onto a school that I think is pretty good school, but this is another hidden gem of an elementary school in SE Valley City to brag about.
School "L" is a traditional school in the school district. The layout is pretty modular, but thanks to construction improvements and add-ons undertaken under city measures, there were additional bungalow style buildings added in 2000s. These don't feel like old-fashioned bungalows, separated as they were in the past. Instead, they are quite modernized with full HVAC units, higher ceilings, shielded florescent lighting, sturdy insulation and materials, and they nestle up to one another like schooners parked to protect different sections of the school: preschool-kindergarten; upper elementary grades; and younger to mid-grades.
To compensate for recent cutbacks to security personnel, the VP and the janitor and other staff are all pulling double-duty sharing the recess monitor, lunch monitor, and after-school. There are additional traffic guards, but they generally are not on campus for very long. The traffic guards were friendly and helpful for visitors.
It is easy to reach this school by city or school bus, since it is off a major transportation corridor into downtown Valley City. Children know that they will likely transition into KC Jr. High School, and quite a few will have their siblings trot along to school with them while dropping off at the Jr. High or High School.
Mrs. M. was warm and eager to allow this substitute to assist today. There was no holding back on offering directions, and she is a very practical, collected, experienced teacher of special education. She did not describe her classroom as such though; rather, it is a "Resources" classroom for the middle-grades for those who need more assisted learning. It did not feel as if there were students who were confined to a "Special education" class all day long. Instead they are sent in for short periods by their teachers.
This freedom of movement and opportunity to spend the majority of time with age-grade level students definitely fosters more inclusion and less stigma for the students visiting the Resources room. They are offered small group instruction to nurture learning growth in reading, writing, and math. The independence of the students is visible in how responsible they are for transporting their learning devices (eg. such as laptops) from the home classroom to Resources.
This observer was impressed with how assimilated and confident and well-functioning the students appeared. There was no fighting, quarreling, time-off-task power struggles taking place between teaching staff and students. They know that they are only there for an hour at a time and it is a welcome in-depth reinforcement. There might have been several borderline autistic students but they all appeared to have reasonably good self-management skills. One gal did seem to have a very hard time focusing on her tasks, but she was also cooperative when it came time to clean up, pack up, and other routine procedures including on her computer.
Nobody exhibited any "tantrum" problems. The transition between classrooms did not appear to create any problems related to ditching class, truancy, or wandering around. The teacher even has a volunteer 5th grader H. who likes to help make phone calls to help remind students to come in for their class time.
The extent to which Mrs. M. decorates the class speaks well for her teaching philosophy. There is room for five full centers in the Resources Room plus an extra table for work alone or possible extra center. Each center has at least four chairs meaning the classroom can accommodate up to 20 students or several different grades, primarily third and fourth grades. Learning centers emphasize practice in reading, phonetics, math, and writing. The walls display family and community, special project such as introduction, essays about goals for 2026, art project using crayola, and leadership essays from a fieldtrip to the Central Coast.
From her years in teaching, Mrs. M. has tons of books stored in her closet of scholastic materials that emphasize caring community, learning engagement, bilingual, and stories to stimulate the imagination for boys and girls or in-between. There are levels of at-grade progress learning in reading and math via paperback texts and workbooks. The variety of students visiting her class also have their IEP folders filed away in crates, plus Mrs. M.'s charts and progress planning on her laptop. All the instructional assistants are furnished similar progress learning laptops.
Today the students were required to undergo standardized testing, and this substitute plus another were required to fill out a form on non-disclosure. However all the students are now taking their standardized tests via laptop. At the end of the testing period, they can save and close their test. After one section of testing, Resources students were allowed to quietly snack and read books. The standardized test rules were posted on the board: no talking, focus, and raise hand for question. The principal came on the intercom and encouraged everyone to do their best. Even students came on and issued cheerful phrases.
Those who are not testing at least today were gathered into the Resources Counseling Assistant room with Mrs. I. As this substitute was there briefly, I was able to assist with some students who were struggling with their homework. The VP took the substitutes on a brief campus tour to locate the test non-disclosure forms. We visited the main office, or walked through the pre-K area where there were a number of assistants working in center tables encouraging their students to participate in phonetics practice.
During recess many of the students went out despite the windy cool day and played in one of the two large playground sets or practices kickball or played tag. This substitute was glad she got to visit Mrs. I's room as she was able to prevent one lad from being bullied by a couple of others. It was not serious, because the lad seemed to enjoy ground contact. This kind of physical contact and busyness is especially appealing to students with, for instance, learning disability or low ASD traits.
Mrs. M. stated that this campus is a dual-immersion campus, so the students have the option to study and speak and learn in both Spanish and English. Since the predominant majority of students are Hispanic, and Cinco de May is tomorrow, there is a lot of local enthusiasm for learning about one's cultural heritage; in fact, the feeder campuses even have Folkloric training and prepare for arts festivals events. These would include Mariachi band practice, Mexican-American folk dancing, photography, and video production.
It appears that because of the strong lines of communication and care fostered among the staff plus the fact that many children stay in this school from K-6, there is much opportunity to blend essential ingredients for holistic and civic type of growth. There is a sense of friendship and community care throughout the school and it feels like a "safe place" for staff, students, parents, even visitors.
Mrs. M's experience, including attending Pacific University, even demonstrates her "pacific" approach to skillfully blending the CHAMPS or Five Pillars philosophies. However instead of rote learning and drilling about these principles, something which graduates from CSU might tend to do, emphasizing rule-learning and law-and-order, instead, she more invites this kind of positive conditioning and behavior. She creates the habitat for engagement, making a positive effort, measurable growth, and civil behaviors. This is evident from the curricula and books and toys chosen, to kinds of computer games that she allows.
Much of this would also be due to being able to transit back to the main classroom, and dialoguing and similar philosophies shared by the Home Room teachers. For instance, they are not emphasizing outside commercialized types of non-productive or non-civic games (such as Minecraft or watching YouTube). No student appeared to have access to their phones while school is in session because nobody carried nor used their phone at any time. When the teacher asked the students to do typing, they obeyed. They also had other options of course such as drawing or reading a book after the main task was completed.
The school and indeed area-wide philosophy around the use of or incorporating artificial-intelligence is being developed at the school board level. Since this paraeducator is mostly working in the lower-grades it is difficult to tell how it will be incorporated. However one thing is clear, that at least at this school, all students, even those attending the Resources classrooms know how to use pencil, paper, crayon at least to some extent. The essays displayed were impressive and indicated much thoughtfulness and originality.
Perhaps the teacher offered the structure for these essays and they had done some brainstorming together, nevertheless, reading the essays, especially the leadership essays from the fieldtrip to the coast, it as evident that these students are writing with their own voice, unimpeded by mandates to "succeed" "excel" "compete" or other afflictions of being reared in an oppressive environment. The pacific philosophy allows correction but very gently, such as conducted by Ms. Q or other assistants, and not emphasizing "red marks."
In fact, the mark of originality appears to allow for sounding out unknown words and phonetic "sounding out" type of misspellings. AI would not allow this, were it to be heavily incorporated, and the children would even be typing rather than handwriting their essays. Being able to view their handwriting also provides observers especially teaching staff, possible clues about their state of mind, thinking processes, interests, any kind of language dysphoria, or organizational challenges. Again, the question is would AI allow humans to actually develop and create their own essays or would we only be able to offer the computer ideas to create our essays for us, thus limiting our authentic cognitive growth. How would this affect overall human development and artistic creativity? Will it reduce and breakdown the bonds between teaching staff and learners?
It is evident that School "L" is productively emphasizing and engaging in all types of learning modalities and involving a wide variety of staff, community, parents, and helpers, which is inspiring.