National Education Week

It is National Education Week in the United States. As part of this week, parents are invited into their children' classroom to observe their education as it happens. This year I needed to visit two classrooms.
I chose to go to Hope's classroom first. I was warmly greeted and a found a chair in the reading corner to sit in. My goal was to become part of the woodwork and see what was happening. I was there 20 minutes. There were 6 adults working with 11 children. In that time I saw Hope throw a pencil, cross her arms and and flat out refuse to do a worksheet, push another student on the way back to her seat, and finally, as they were lining up for gym hit the boy next to her. The boy told an aide Hope hit him. The aide said, "You're all right. I am sure it was an accident." Maybe people only see what they expect to see.

Next stop was GB's room. Everything was so different. There were 3 adults working with 8 children. The adults were aware of everything every child was doing. Throughout the twenty minutes I visited, there were many instances of *catching them them being good*. The teacher did a good job teaching the kids to distinguish complete sentences from incomplete sentences. He incorporated following directions and dump trucks into his lesson, which made the 7 boys in the class happy.

I want more for Hope. I do not know where to start. Her last CSE meeting was only a week ago. I don't know what else to say.