Entry #6 - Learn & Serve

My learn and serve placement this week went very well like always. When I first arrived in the class at 9:00am the students were just arriving and beginning to eat their breakfasts. Like the other teachers in the classroom, I helped the students unpack their belongings into their locker and get started on their breakfast. During breakfast, I walked around and spoke to many of the students who had many interesting stories to tell me. There is this one student named Gabe, who is a second grader. Gabe has down syndrome, and during breakfast he was explaining a story to me that happened over the weekend. He was so enthusiastic and had so much character. During the story he jumped up from his chair to describe something his brother had done. It was hilarious! He was so energetic and entertaining and had all of us laughing. After breakfast, the kids headed over to the carpet for morning meeting. During morning meeting they figure out the date, the weather, the lunch count, and the jobs each person will have for the day. The students get so excited for the jobs. They love to be assigned a role in the classroom. After morning meeting, we begin reading. During reading, Mr. Azzarella reviews the alphabet with the children and they sing several songs to engrain the letters into the student's knowledge. When they have reviewed a couple of times, Mr. Azzarella will have the students come up one by one and go over the ABC's with him. When each student has completed this, Mr. Azzarella normally reads the student's an alphabet book. After he has finished, he assigns each student to a station where the children normally play a game that has to do with the alphabet. After about ten minutes the children will clean up and switch stations, so that everyone has a turn at each. When the students break off into their groups, one of the teachers will lead each station. Today I helped with an alphabet match game. First the students had to put the alphabet cards in the correct order (A-Z) and then had to match the lowercase letters with the capital letters they had already put down. Things were going great until the last group came over. This group of three included Gabe. As the students were setting out the cards in order, Gabe began throwing the cards and would not participate in the game. I asked Gabe to stop numerous times and even placed the cards out of his reach. When I did this, Gabe throw a tantrum and Mr. Azzarella took control. Mr. Azzarella explained to me later that that happens a lot with students who have been diagnosed with down syndrome. He explained that tantrums are common, and that there were many times in past years where he has had students with down syndrome that have become violent with other students and even teachers. It was shocking to me, and although I did not necessarily like the situation, it was good experience to know how to handle a situation like that for the future.