Placement Post #2 Matthew

I was not able to stop by my placement for two weeks since Macalester had spring break and then the public school district had their break the following week. This made me feel out of place when I showed up on Tuesday for the first time in nearly 14 days. I could tell that some of the students had already forgot that I was helping the class. Fortunately it did not take long to get back into the swing of things.

Since the beginning for the semester I have been working with one student who came into the year far below the reading level of his age. At the start he was very had to get motivated to practice and do his work. In the last few weeks however he seems like a completely different student. His reading ability has sky rocketed and he can't wait to read each day. I can tell that this has made the teacher very proud. She often speaks about how difficult it is to get most of the students who are struggling with their work re motivated and interested in school, and to have one student who seems to be internally motivated is a sight for sore eyes. It reminded me of something that I heard in an Education class at Macalester a few semesters back. It was that all students deep down want to learn, and it is our job as instructors to unlock that passion.

This past week I also was given the opportunity to watch as Lily, the teacher I'm following, did testing to see if a student needed to come back to special ed classes. She had mentioned that in his normal classes the student was not having as much success as he had been when he was in her special ed reading class. The normal reading class teacher mentioned that he seems to be skipping much of his work and often off task. When Lily talked to the student about the possibility of having to come back to her classes he was very shocked. He had worked hard to graduate from the special ed class and did not want to return. The testing was very straight forward. First he was timed to see how many words in a short story he could read in one minute. At this task he was well above his grade level so he showed proficiency. The second task was a listening and comprehension task. Lily read him a story and then asked ten questions. He answered 9/10 correctly. I was surprised at this number because in my head I was only able to remember about 7 of them. Both of these tests showed that he should not be struggling with the work he has in his class and he then admitted that he was not trying very hard. This instance reminded that sometimes students need to be told what could happen if then do not put forth a little more effort.