Cokie Gaich

Integrated Core 2 Block: ED 299

Spring 2017

6/9/17 Crooked Creek Elementary School (Washington Township)

Reflection

Funding:

Crooked Creek Elementary School receives $4,000 - $5,000 per student enrolled
and currently has about 800 students. But as class sizes grow, the amount per student
received decreases as the funding is from the government. This decrease makes it
harder to find appropriate resources for all the students while staying in budget. Along
with the increase in the student body, Crooked Creek has had to become creative in
finding extra classroom space, such as turning old storage rooms into classrooms and
building trailers, or cottages, to be used for classrooms as well.

Special Education Population:

The elementary school population is 14% special education, which equals to

about 112 students for this academic year. They have a Functional Academic
Classroom (FAC) for special education, which is located in the basement of the school
and is locked from the inside. I would assume this is to minimize any distractions in the
classroom and that this one specific class is for the more serious cases and many of the
students are still placed in the general education classes. Im going off this assumption
because under IDEA the special education population includes more than just a
learning or developmental disability. When walking the hallways of the school, we saw a
physical therapy session in progress that was aimed to help the student increase
strength and function in her legs. To me this shows that the school is very inclusive and
really tries to go above and beyond to give students the help the need and deserve.
Since we didnt get to observe the special education classroom, my view on special
education hasnt changed. I know from other education classes at Butler schools have
to adapt to the least restrictive environment, like I said before I would imagine this class
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isnt all the special needs students.

Educational Program:
Crooked Creek has a considerably lower ratio of ENL students to teachers
(87:1), which allows for more individual time and student-teacher interactions. Many of
the Washington Township schools are embracing and implementing the IB program into
their curriculum as well. This program focuses on investigations, personal inquiry, and
critical thinking. In previous years, theyve only implemented this program in Social
Studies and English. This year one of their goals is the implement the IB program into
their math curriculum by having students begin math investigations into concepts rather
than the traditional math learning. Another aspect of their educational program that
stands out to me is their partnership with their Chinese sister school. I feel that in the
past any field visits that had sister schools werent as involved with them as Crooked
Creek is. With this partnership teachers go to the opposite school and teacher the
students and faculty about the different cultures. The students at Crooked Creek learn
from the Chinese sister schoolteachers about the Chinese culture and as a school they
celebrate the Chinese New Year.
In this class, were talking a lot about neuroscience and education, and the
elementary school has done a lot to put focus on these subjects to create a better
learning environment for their students and staff. One of the clubs the faculty created
was Brain-Buddies, where students would get a buddy from a different grade and learn
about the brain and the stress response. This would build relationships between
students and also help them to understand whats happening in their bodies. The story
the Social and Emotional Behavior Coach told us really highlighted the success of this
program. This school has also created an amygdala reset room for all of their school
population to use and has many ways for people to reduce their stress response and
get ready for whatever task maybe ahead of them. The school has created a
Neuroscience club as well where they target a small group of problem students to
teach them about their brains and so then these students are able to become leaders
and mentors to other students to pass on this knowledge. Lastly, in class we talked
about the importance of recess and Washington Township keeps a close eye on all of
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their schools to make sure that teachers arent taking away recess as a punishment.
This is because they know about all the benefits children get from recess and how itll
actually help them to learn.

The Students:
In general I found the students to be very inquisitive not only about what they
were learning but also about the people they were interacting with. It kept reminding me
of how the brain wants to make connections and relationships, not only with people but
also across content matter in life and school. The students I was working with and from
what I heard during discussions was that the students wanted to share the information
they learned and tell us their personal stories that connected to the activities we did
together.
The two students I worked with, Elvis and Amaya, each reminded me of myself in
different ways. Amaya was able to complete assignments fairly quickly since she said
her strength is reading, this reminded me of how a lot of people can complete activities
quickly if they have a particular skills set that helps the. Generally, she was pretty calm
and liked to joke around and mentioned that she didnt have many triggers. Today, I
think I relate to that because I like to think Im a calm person the majority of the time and
I dont have too many triggers that would make me explode. I really related to Elvis,
especially looking back on how I was at his age. He mentioned that he really liked math
and science, and struggled with reading. With this being said he asks for help and
clarification when he doesnt understand something while still being confident in himself.
I noticed that he had a positive outlook on situations that involve others and would
normally be seen as negative (e.g. other students humiliating him). I found this last one
to be almost comforting because he has a great sense of self-confidence and self-
awareness that he knows when people are making fun of him it could be out of jealousy
or misunderstanding.

College Life Experiences:

If I had to share with individual students my experience in college, I would talk

about the support network that you can build. It becomes very obvious, at least for me,
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that people care about you and your well-being, sometimes this includes strangers. Ive
been able to build a supportive network of different people at college and its helped me
grow as a person and made me think about the adult I hope to become. From my
experience before college, there was never a big focus on how important mental health
is to lead a healthy life, but also to engage in learning. Coming to college so many
professors and other leaders in the community have made it known that they care about
every one as an individual and understand when our mental health may not be at its
peak. Days like this, Ive had professor change their lesson plan so that we can use
their class time to relax and make sure we arent over-extending ourselves.

Implications of Brain Development:

When we first arrived at Crooked Creek we met with the Social and Emotional
Behavior Coach for the district, which is a new position and focuses on making
curriculum brain-aligned and how to regulate our stress response while learning about
the brain. I mentioned in the section about educational programs above the many
different clubs and curriculum changes that they are making so that neuroscience and
education can become a norm in their education system. The activity we were doing
with the classrooms was focusing on identifying triggers for each individual student. This
helps the teacher understand the students better and design lessons and a community
where they can minimize triggers. It was also mentioned that one of the teachers was
adopting a no classroom structure way of teaching, which in turn focuses on creating a
strong, supportive community for the students where they feel safe and comfortable to
ask questions and help each other.

View of Effective School Leadership:

Effective school leadership will put an emphasis on the importance of

neuroscience in education and strive to make changes in the curriculum and school
community to incorporate the new research surrounding these topics. I liked the idea
the one teacher had to have the students create a community of their own rather than
just establishing what the teacher expects. I feel that when students are given the
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opportunity to make their own decisions and are given responsibility they prove to be
successful in ways most people cant imagine.