Week One

My first day in the grade 2 classroom was very engaging and educational. When my partner and I first walked in I had noticed that the classroom teacher addresses the students as “grade 2’s”, I found this very interesting and positive because it takes out the importance of gender, and places all of the students on the same level. The classroom layout were pushed all together, almost as a table (one student is farther away from the rest which I found interesting, I did not end up asking her why everybody had a buddy except one of the boys.) An observation I had made was that the boys and girls mostly separated themselves. The girls played with the girls and almost entirely avoided the boys, and vice-versa. The teacher had a microphone on her phone, when I asked her why she said that all Prairie Valley Schools are doing that now, for students who are hard of hearing, or if they have a hard time keeping focus, it helps them. The class seemed to mostly have hands on learning, during math class, the students used ones and ten’s blocks in order to understand addition. During lunch the students listened to stories together while they ate, which I found pretty cool. It was a way to keep their brains somewhat engaged in learning, but in a way that they enjoyed.

The teacher mentioned a few programs that the school had, and the one I found to be most interesting was the GDA (Gender Diversity Alliance), anyone was welcome to attend this program, and it was a safe space at lunch time for kids to spend some time with other students who may feel different, and need support. I really thought this was a cool program because gender and sexuality is a very taboo thing for kids to talk about, however the sooner we show kids that it is okay to talk about and ask questions about, they can become more educated, open, accepting adults. The school also had neutral bathrooms, some of them were “boys” and some “girls”, but there were also single stall ones that students could use. The week that we had come on was French Immersion week; celebrating the anniversary of French Immersion becoming integrated into schools. The school had different themes for each day to celebrate, the day that my partner and I were at the school it was poutine lunch (Monday was 70’s day, where students dressed like they were from the 70’s because that’s when French immersion started). 

When I asked the teacher about the community culture, she said that the school has “families” which pairs senior students with some of the younger students. This gives then younger students a mentor, and somebody older that they can look up to, and gives the older students a sense of responsibility. The teacher said that the school tries to do field trips around Lumsden to local businesses so that the students can see what they do. The students also go to the care home on holidays (one example she gave was that on Halloween the students went and visited them in their costumes). 

I really enjoyed my first day, the teacher was very nice,  along with the rest of the faculty. The students were very excited for my partner and I to be joining the classroom, and the school community seemed overall very positive. I am very excited for the weeks to follow.