Heather's Teaching- Post 5

It has been an interesting experience for me to observe the students in light of the contextual factors our teacher gave us at the beginning of this process. From her explanation of her students, and the general student population at the school, I expected to meet a group of students with low self confidence and attitude problems. This is almost the opposite of what I’ve found in my students at Spanish Fork. What I learned from this is that although it is important to be aware of the contextual factors surrounding your students and your school, you can’t let that form your opinions about how your students will act, who they are, or what they are capable of. I would have never known these were low income kids coming from the ‘bad’ part of town.
I did find that it was important for me to know that some of the students do not have access to technology in their homes. This changed the course of our lesson. I have started to assume that every home has the internet, that every home has a computer, and this has been a very important lesson to me that that may not always be true. Where I may have had students take their scripts home to work on and type at home, I’ve decided to keep that activity in class. Knowing the general contextual factors surrounding your students’ lives, should be something you’re aware of as a teacher, but not something that lets you make pre-judgments about your students and their abilities.