Classroom Culture- Context

My practicum placement at Alexander Wilson Elementary has provided me with the

opportunity to work in a completely new environment in comparison to my placement last
semester at Highland Elementary. The students, classroom makeup and characteristics offer a
diverse perspective of culture and curriculum in an elementary school classroom in the 21st
century. This analysis will outline my experiences working with the students and curriculum in
Mr. Flacks fourth grade classroom throughout the fall semester of 2016.
Mr. Flacks classroom consists of twenty-four students from various backgrounds,
ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses which calls for careful attention to the facilitation of their
learning to ensure that each of them reaches academic success within the classroom. In order
to become a culturally competent teacher, it is a necessity to foster a classroom environment
that is accessible to children from a multitude of backgrounds. During my first two weeks as a
teacher candidate in this classroom I have noticed that many of the students have different
learning needs that stem from cognitive processing, learning disabilities, and in one case
learning the English language from scratch. In an effort to learn more about the cultural design
of our class, I spent time speaking with, Samel, a student that moved to the United States from
Colombia earlier this year. Samel is an English language learner who has had very little
exposure to the language upon moving to the states. Despite how difficult it is to be fully
engaged in each subject, Samel receives help through learning specialists, index cards
displaying the Spanish translation of objects around the room, as well as from his classmates
and teachers in order to feel fully included and involved within the classroom. From what I have
experienced this far, Mr. Flacks has provided a welcoming classroom environment for his
students through use of accommodation within his pedagogy. The characteristics of Mr. Flacks
classroom environment add to this trait of accommodation as well.

The characteristics of Mr. Flacks classroom provide a vision for what 21st century
learning should look like. He has utilized tactics that involve technology and collaboration in
many areas of his classroom. In terms of the advancement of technology in the classroom, each
student is provided a google chromebook for daily assignments. Mr. Flack uses a windows
tablet to project each of the daily lessons and assignments on a smartboard for students to
follow along with on their chromebooks. Assignments are posted each week on the google
classroom application. The students have become proficient in using the google applications in
order to complete each assignment. This is the first time that I have seen technology being used
at such a consistent rate within the classroom. In terms of collaboration, Mr. Flack has placed
students in clusters of four desks in order for them to work together to reach a common
agreement of course content. Other areas that facilitate collaboration include student
designated work areas that consist of a large table aside from the desks as well as his horseshoe styled teacher desk. Each of these areas are used for small group work during teacher
directed and independent practice.
It is apparent through interaction with each student as well as the characteristics of the
classroom that Mr. Flack has created a learning environment that fosters the ideology of student
achievement in the classroom setting.

Classroom Culture- Specialist Interviews

The student makeup in a public school system requires classroom teachers and learning
specialists to work together to help each student reach academic success. The learning specialists
within my classroom context serve as English Language Learner specialists, and speech &
language specialists. My cooperating teacher works together with these specialists in order to
facilitate which literacy level specific students should focus on within our classroom as well as

creating appropriate groups to place students in for small group work. According to Educational
Learning Specialists LLC, English Language Learners are the fastest growing segment of the
nations student population. By the end of the decade, students whose first language is not
english will make up more than a quarter of all United States students. These reasons reinforce
why it is a necessity to have ELL training for all public schools.
According to my schools student improvement plan, one of the performance gaps that
exists among diverse populations includes reading gaps with Hispanic students. The ELL
specialist seeks to decrease this gap through intervention within the English Language. At the
beginning there is a diagnostic assessment distributed in order for specialists to analyze each
students ability level within the language in order to target which content to work on. It is
necessary to target these areas, no matter how basic the level, in order to help each student
pinpoint the english language from the scale of the alphabet and phonemic awareness to
comprehension. ELL specialist techniques transfer over into the classroom through spanish to
english translation. Academic resources and objects around the classroom are labeled with index
cards which have the English to Spanish translation in order to help aid students who are learning
English as a second language. Specific assignments also have an English to Spanish translation
for this process of language alleviation as well.
The speech and language specialists surround our classroom context with reading and
spelling evaluation and intervention. There are a handful of students within our classroom
context who are not on grade level with reading literacy. In an effort to alleviate our students
difficulty with reading and in an effort to try and get them back on track before middle school,
each of these students meets with a specialist once a day to strengthen their concepts of
phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. ELL specialist

techniques transfer over to our classroom through the use of online resources. The online
resources used for English language arts include the option to set assignments at different
literacy grade levels. This ultimately helps these students work on their targeted literacy areas
while incorporating the aspect of feeling included within daily activities without being singled
out for not being at the grade level that they should.
The academic specialists within our classroom context serve as an aid to help students
reach their goals to succeed as a student in cooperation of the administrations school
improvement plan. One of the five priorities that the school has on its school improvement plan
is to reduce the achievement gap in the area of reading for our students. In my experience within
my practicum placement, the partnership between classroom teachers and specialists have served
this commitment to the best of their abilities in order to focus students to become on grade level
within reading literacy.

Classroom Culture- Find & Describe Resources

There is a stigma behind mental health in our society that exposes it as a sign of
weakness. As a result, many mental health disorders go unacknowledged and unsupported within
students in classrooms across our nation. As a preservice teacher, I would like to learn how to
become prepared on how to approach and help students work through their emotional,
behavioral, or psychological problems. In order to become prepared for this pedagogical
challenge, it is important to provide children and adolescents with links to appropriate services to
help identify their mental health problems and utilize strategies to cope with them.
Unfortunately, not every child has access to these services which poses the question: How can
we help each student in need? The research based journal article Mental Health and Social

Services: Results from the School Health Policies and Programs seeks to address these issues in
an effort to change the stigma on mental health within our society to help children receive the
treatment that they deserve.
The 2000 report of the surgeon generals conference on childrens mental health states
that 1 in 5 kids and adolescents have emotional or behavioral problems sufficient enough to
warrant a mental health diagnosis. This number is seen to be amplified in the demographic of
kids living in urban areas, as a result of living conditions associated with poverty. This statistic is
alarming due to the mental health concern that emotional, behavioral, and psychosocial problems
can disrupt function at home, in schools, and within the community. This begs the question: are
schools offering services for children to receive help? Unfortunately, the article proves that there
are a number of barriers to children receiving help.
Accessibility is the first barrier; community centers, hospitals, and private offices are
unlikely to be accessed by students due to the availability, stigma, transportation, and financial
constraints. There is also an accessibility issue in receiving help within schools because schools
lack resources to handle a full range of mental health conditions. This issue of accessibility leads
to the marginalization of mental health issues by the education system. This is partly related to
the fear schools have of assuming responsibility for what can be highly labor-intensive and
costly challenges presented by students. Because mental health is essential to learning, social,
and emotional development, schools should have a unique duty to not only identify mental health
problems of students but help provide them links to appropriate services. The framework for
what mental health programs should look like is outlined below.
At the school district level, programs and services oriented to student needs and problems
should be provided to some extent. At the school owned and operated level, there should be

counselors, psychologists and social workers available to some extent. According to Slade, when
mental health services were offered at schools, students were more likely to see a counselor.
However, because planning, implementation and evaluation are fragmented within schools at the
district and owned levels, it ultimately leads to marginalization in school policy and practice in
regard to mental health services. At the federal level, there are initiatives to help facilitate growth
of school based mental health programs and services, however, they are subject to broad health
services such as the IDEA (reauthorized in 2004.)
In order to make sure that each child has the means to receive the help that they need the
following efforts must be made. There is a need to build systematic state agendas for school
based mental health, emphasizing a shared responsibility among families, schools, and
communities. Mental health needs must be addressed collaboratively by education agencies,
mental health agencies, and public health agencies. As a means of increasing my pedagogical
awareness, I must incorporate holding the knowledge of how I can get each of my students the
help they need if they are dealing with mental health issues.

Works Cited
1. Brener, N. D., Weist, M., Adelman, H., Taylor, L., & Vernon-Smiley, M. (2007).
Mental Health and Social Services: Results From the School Health Policies and
Programs Study 2006. The Journal Of School Health, 77(8), 486-99.