Section 1: Academic Achievement - National Center for School ...

for free lunch, any debt remaining on the account doesn’t go away, it must be paid by the
family before a la carte items can be bought. Maria, terrified of the lunch lady, and sick with
grief from the situation, went home physically ill from the stress of the incident. I
investigated this issue and hit a block because my principal said it was the Director of Food
Services call, not ours. Three weeks later, Maria’s family moved back to Mexico.
Cycle Two
My first round of observations clarified the difficult nature of the Title Math job. As support
teachers, we are not immersed in a regular classroom setting where we would see what is
going on for our students. We have students only for a precious 30 – 45 minutes per day.
Nor do we observe them in other settings, unless we go out of our way to do so. My next
question was how do you make something meaningful for students without knowing who they
are? And, once you know about their lives, then what are you going to do with that
information? Emilio, Tessa, and Maria are just three students in a school full of children
whom I got to know a little. Yet, as I learned from the first COPAR experience; if my
students don’t feel a connection to me, they won’t learn. For students from a Hispanic
background, where interpersonal relationships come first in every aspect of life, this is
especially true.
So, I needed to take a critical look at my groups and what I was doing to build relationships.
Sadly, it wasn’t much. Faced with the daunting task of getting students who were drastically
falling further and further behind in school, I was on warp speed. Students were seated and
we dove right into the lesson without any conversation. It went like this: “Hi! How are you?
Have a seat. We have lots to do today!” Then, we launched into review, a new lesson, and
application of our knowledge. Then they were out the door where the next group was waiting
for me. I hadn’t built the relationships or the learning community necessary to do meaningful
work in any subject. Yes, I was following the model of the Title One literacy program, yet it
wasn’t working for me. More importantly it wasn’t working for any of my students.
Furthermore, I built in no time between groups to reflect about them and about the
effectiveness of my teaching. The unspoken rule (or expectation) in the building was that you
crammed in as many groups as possible during a day because contact with students was far
more important than thinking about their education and their well being. This was disturbing.
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