Reflection #3-Maggie Fitzmaurice

Within Mr. Brown's class, I think he does a good job maintaining and continuously building a classroom community. As a male teacher, I think Mr. Brown is at a disadvantage because usually female teachers are more likely to give hugs, come out as the more "motherly role" and in today's society teachers are usually female. Mr. Brown, while he does not give out hugs and does not act "motherly" to his students, does know each child individually and really does care about his class. He knows the students who need that extra push, the students who need their alone time, and the students that need to sit in groups. He loves to pick and play jokes on the students, and is always telling riddles or has the students laughing when teaching. I think it is very important to have a teacher-student relationship in order to have a strong classroom community. Mr. Brown also has daily jobs that students participate in, which are posted on theboard. This makes the classroom feel more like a "working community" because everyone is participating to make the classroom work. Students' desks are grouped in three big groups and there is a lot of group work given out. This allows students to work together as a team and help each other out. All students know Mr. Brown's class rules and they also know the consequences. Mr. Brown rarely has to talk to a child one on one, rather he just asks them to "flip down", and they automatically stop what they are not suppose to be doing. The flip chart has 5 colors and students start in the middle and try to achieve the highest color each day. There are many rewards to ending up on the highest color several times, such as 20 minutes on the computer, which Mr. Brown makes public if a child receives a certificate for the computer, so others will strive for it also.

Within the partnership school, Underwood, all classrooms have the flip chart process. Any teacher can ask a student to flip up or down. This seems to be a working system, because the students rotate classrooms so much, and now each teacher has the same disciplinary system. Since many students switch classes throughout the day, the students are taught to walk on the right side of the hall, and there are certain stairways that are “up” stairways and “down” stairways, to keep order in the school traffic. The school is very neat and clean, with student artwork hanging all over the halls. The feel of the school is very homey and comfortable.