Avelina Campos-Marquez's Interview with a Second Grade Teacher

Ms. A. teaches at M Elementary School in this seaside California town. This school has a fairly heterogeneous makeup of Asians 5%, Black/African 12%, Latino/Hispanic 29% and White (non-Hispanic) 46. M Elementary School mainly serves children from all branches of the military, and a few of the locals that are attracted to the Dual Language Immersion Program (DLIP). Ms. A is currently is part of the DLIP Staff at M Elementary School, this would be her third year teaching at this school. M Elementary is one of very few schools that still use the DILP model and is currently using the 50/50 model, 50 % of instruction is conducted in Spanish and the other 50% of instruction is instructed in English.

Ms. A went to school at a California State University, and did not go through the traditional student teacher program. She had her emergency 30-day teaching permit when she started teaching her first year. She was terrified of teaching her first year, but she ended up having a perfect classroom. Her classroom consisted of twenty-one students. Out of the twenty-one, eighteen students were girls. She has been teaching for 14 years now, and had been able to work in a variety of settings and school districts. In those fourteen years, she has only taught second and third grade, describing second grade being the best, because third grade is full of transitions as far as academics for the children. She has had the opportunity to teach in a Structured English Immersion (English only classroom), bilingual classroom, and now currently teaching in a DILP. She has worked in three different districts in California.
"Without a structure, you cannot teach." Ms. A says about a basic philosophy. Ms. A thinks there should be a balance in literacy between word study, phonics, writing, and not isolating them from each other as they all lead to one goal. She has a strong belief that public education needs to provide the best services for all children in order to succeed academically, and there should be high expectations for all students.

      Her classroom is set up and based on language. She has chosen the color blue, to represent the bilingualism the children are acquiring. Each bulletin board in her classroom serves an instructional purpose. These bulletins boards are all interactive and all children can reach them. The bulletins boards need to be interactive and well organized for the children to be able to see the flow of information. She uses three main bulletin boards. One has "La Gran Pregunta" (the big question) and this bulletin is solely dedicated to Spanish Language Arts. She has a very well organized bulletin containing everything the children will be learning in the unit. Every week, the vocabulary words change, and the small topics do as well, as well as mentioning the standards that are being covered in the lesson.

      Then she has the bulletin that is dedicated to math. On this bulletin board all the objectives of the day are displayed, as well as the standards and all the new vocabulary words we will be learning in each topic within the unit.

      The last bulletin board, which she is just starting to put together, is for her small groups. Because of the DLI program, they focus a lot on interaction between students. She has set up her classroom in a way that all the tables are directed towards the center of the room. Then, each group consists of a boy/girl, and is arranged by an English speaker next to an ELL.

      Ms. A is great about updating her bulletin board in a daily basis.

      As part of her instructional strategies she uses the Multiple Intelligence. She believes that certain strategies will keep them engaged, and not all students learn the same. She does a lot of teacher directed instruction, not so much because of the scripted curriculum, but because the language and the classroom materials are very structured as well. After the giving the first benchmark this up coming week, she will be then shifting into small group activities (many call them centers), in order to have differentiated as well as direct instruction. This differentiation is mainly to be able to aid students in a particular area they need extra help, and at the same time challenge those overachievers in the class.

      When I asked her about what keeps her motivated and enthusiastic about teaching her eyes lit up and responded with a huge smile telling me "I love what I do." Ms. A loves to push students to do the best she can. She has high expectations for all of her students regardless of the level they are in. She tries to provide as much support for the students, but she does not enable them to fail.

      I learned a lot from the interview and from being on her classroom every day. Ms. A and I have similar backgrounds; we both were raised in Mexico, both were able to attend college here in California and both ending up in the education field. I can see myself as a close image of Ms. A in a way that she approaches the children, the way she looks at the smallest detail.