I remember the first day Logan and I walked into Ms. McLaughlin’s fourth grade classroom; I was struck by the ratio of girls to boys. There are fourteen girls and four boys, and almost all of them are white, so is the teacher — she’s a white woman like so many other teachers. Ms. McLaughlin looks like most of students she teaches, and that’s likely helpful for those students, but what about the few non-white students in the classroom? It is important for students to have role models at the front of the classroom, but that doesn’t exist for a lot of students. It’s been interesting to observe what books the students are read, too. A few weeks ago, Ms. McLaughlin was reading the class a book about immigration to the U.S. It was the type of elementary school book that leaves a lot of the details of Ellis Island out, and just focused on how immigrants came to America in search of a better life and that’s how people of different ethnicities and races spread across the country. The book in a sense was talking about diversity, but did not do it in a fruitful or realistic way.

On Friday when the kids came in from music class, there was a lot of discussion about the new student that will be joining the classroom next week. The teacher had added a new desk and all the kids were in a frenzy. “Yasmine is going to sit next to me!” one girl said. Ms. McLaughlin then said, “Is it Yasmine or Jasmine?” It’s spelled, Yasmine, for context, and based on her last name, she is likely a student of color (I hope it’s okay to say that). It surprised me that the teacher didn’t know how to pronounce her new student’s name, and also that she put her next to one of the only other girls of color in the classroom. Was this intentional to make the new student more comfortable?

For the most part, all the kids are taught the same way. There are some students that leave the classroom to see another teacher(these seem to be the kids that need a little extra help), but besides that, Ms. McLaughlin is in charge of all eighteen students. I think a fourth grade classroom might look a lot different than a high school classroom in terms of thinking about diversity. For instance, there are not yet big standardized tests (that I have heard about, at least) which could lead to issues of unfair performance assessment (and stereotype threat). However, the teacher still does her own fair share of assessing. Once, when I was helping Nick with math, the teacher noticed that he had answered a question incorrectly on his iPad. She said to have him write it out because it was too hard for him to do in his head. She was wrong though, Nick had come to the correct answer to the question but had just hit the buttons on the screen. In fact, he’d done over a dozen problems correctly in his head. I don’t know why the teacher expected him to perform poorly, because every time I’ve done math with him he has excelled. When I asked him if he liked math, though, he replied, “Not really, I’m not very good at it.” Does he already know that boys of color are often expected to perform lower on math tests than other students? Even though Nick can do complex multiplication and addition in his head, that is not always reflected in the math exit slips and quizzes the students are given on Fridays.

There is one black girl in the class. Her name is Damaria and she’s one of the smartest kids in the class. She is really awesome and is one of the few kids in the classroom that acts a little more grown up. She often wears pretty stylish clothes, and once I overheard a conversation between her and the teacher that addressed this. Ms. McLaughlin was recommending Damaria a book about a girl that did “her own thing and didn’t care what other people thought of her.” She told Damaria that the character reminded her of her and that she thought that Damaria could relate to her. I don’t know exactly what to read into this, but I thought it was interesting. Ms. McLaughlin is good about recommending books to her students, but she seemed to pay particular attention to this conversation.

In other news, Logan and I got to observe and help out with another math lesson this week. The kids were learning about different categorizations of shapes, like quadrilaterals, parallelograms, kites, etc. The kids break up into three groups during his time. One group will be at the back table working on the math lesson with the teacher. Another group will work on IXL, the online math program. And the last group gets to work on color-by-number multiplication sheets. The first group to come to the back table was the lowest level math group. They all had to find the cutouts of the rectangles and squares, among the kites, rhombuses, etc. Additionally, the teacher told them to share. They did a good job at finding the shapes and also split the pieces of paper up pretty evenly between themselves. However, as the lesson progresses, it was clear the kids didn’t have a great understanding of the shapes and their lines of symmetry. However, the next group that came was the highest math level group. Upon hearing the prompt to split the squares and rectangles amongst themselves, the kids instantly battled to get as many shapes as they could, unwilling to share with their classmates — it took a considerable amount of cajoling to get the kids to share. As the lesson continued, I was amazed at the difference between the two sets of kids. One student, Ben, asked plainly, “Let me get this right…” followed by all these categorizations of shapes that I even have a hard time getting straight! It was so easy for all of them.

During my time walking around the classroom, I ended up asking the kids their opinions on IXL. “Is it hard?” I asked two students. They both shook their heads and rolled their eyes. “No, it’s so easy,” one girl said. “Oh, it’s easy? Well, is it fun?” I asked in return. They looked at me and both chimed in that IXL was “so boring.” I continued to make my rounds, asking the kids if the games were easy or hard. Everyone apart from Ben and Damaria (who were working on the harder math problems) said the program was easy and boring. I asked two desk buddies if they like Lexia (the reading online program) better but they said “yes, but not really.” “Oh,” I said, “I thought everyone liked Lexia more than IXL?” Andy replied that he’d rather do Lexia than IXL, but despised each. “Hmm, that’s too bad. Well, do you like reading?” I asked. This got an enthusiastic yes! The kids love reading but no one can stand their iPad time. Perhaps I should not have asked these questions to the kids, but I found their answers really interesting. Why are these programs used if they’re boring and too easy for almost all the kids? One reason is that the teacher can track their progress, and even put it up on the board for everyone to see. Another is that the teacher can easily assign problems that match the lesson she has been teaching that week. There must be a better way to learn, though!

Lastly, to finish up the math section of class, the kids all took an exit slip quiz and Logan and I got to grade them. A lot of the students struggled with units, and several missed a few lines of symmetry. There was one girl we were tasked with helping. After she completed the exit slip, we asked her to look back over the line of symmetry for a trapezoid. “So, if you fold it in half this way, will the corners match up?” we asked, folding the shape along the line of symmetry (and the opposite line of what she had drawn on the paper). She nodded and we believed she understood. Then she continued to draw the wrong line of symmetry on the trapezoid. We explained in a different way again and again, but she never drew the right answer. After Logan and I left the classroom, we were briefly talking about this experience and Logan pointed out that Kelly (the girl we were working with) often says “yes” even if she doesn’t understand. She seems to have learned that a lot of the time, “yes” is what the teacher wants to hear, but she’s not always right, and she’s not learning.