Brancati 1

Victor Brancati

Dr. Ferrando

LS4001

2/11/19

Fieldwork Essay 1: Capstone Connections

This semester I have my fieldwork at Laurel Dell Elementary School in San Rafael. I am

very happy to be able to observe a male teacher for the first time in my fieldwork. I think this

will be a good opportunity for me to learn about classroom management among other things. For

my capstone I am studying how teachers’ classroom management skills can help prevent

bullying, and how teachers can facilitate conflicts between students. Being placed in a fourth-

grade classroom will help me research and observe events for my senior capstone because the

older students are more capable of bullying. In this paper I plan to explore bullying through my

observations in the classroom at Laurel Dell and at the lesson study at Hamilton elementary

school.

When I started my fieldwork, my teacher told me to sit and watch. I think this is because

in the mornings at the beginning of school he talks to the whole class and because the teacher is

talking to the whole class there is not very much for me to do. I do make sure to walk around to

see that the students are following along and paying attention. When the teacher starts the

lessons, that is when I help and interact with the students in small groups or one-on-one.

I mentioned to my teacher about my senior capstone and he gave me some info about

various students and what I can look for. He explained to me that one student tends to be very

disruptive in the class and then when his fellow students get upset at him, he claims that they are

bullying him. It just so happened that later that day I actually saw an event like that happen. I
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was starting to work in a small group when one more student in the group came to sit down, but

there was not enough space. The boy who is being bullied would not share his space to make

room and when the other student tried to move to sit down he got upset. The other student started

telling him to move to make space and he immediately claimed how he was being bullied. The

whole event could have been avoided if he had moved and shared his space.

For some of the events that I observe I want to see how the students carry things out

without any external influence by me, but for this specific event the boy who claims to be bullied

started getting teary eyed and I did intervene. I explained to him the situation that all he needed

to do is make space, but he would not go back. I made space for him near me where he could sit,

and everything was resolved. As for the teachers influence, he was on the other side of the room

at the time and might not have seen it happen. Had I not been there, he may have been walking

around the room or noticed the kids yelling at each other and intervened in his own way. Since

this boy can be disruptive to the class, the teacher knows that to best help him from being

bullied, he needs to explain when the student is interrupting other students and bothering them. I

saw how the teacher was strict with the student explaining that he cannot start yelling and

singing during a quiet reading time.

Last week, the students were working on group projects. Even though this may not be an

event of specific bullying I think it is important to note. In one group, one girl with four other

boys was working on the project. She ended up doing almost all of the work while the boys sat

and did almost nothing. Now my teacher did let me know that one of the boys had actually come

a long way. At the beginning of the year, he would have been tearing up papers and yelling how

he did not want do the work, but now he was actually on the his laptop looking for videos about

the topic. Even with this background, the girl willingly did all of the work to get it done and even
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though she may have been upset about being the only one to do it she still did it. The ratios in the

class, forced the other groups to only have two girls in each of them. In all the groups, the girls

were the ones who mainly did the work. I would like to look further into this, but for now I am

surprised to see that they feel it is almost like their role.

My observations at Hamilton elementary school were that Alyssa Campbell did a great

job of teaching the lesson about reading and made sure to include all of the students in the class

as well as differentiating instruction so all of the students can learn in the best way for

themselves. Alyssa did a great job of demonstrating the Teacher Performance Expectations

(TPEs). Specifically for TPE 2: Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student

Learning, she had arranged her class in a way that allowed all of the students to focus on their

work and when they were in whole group instruction she made sure that all of the students

respected one another as they would stay quite and engaged to what each other were saying.

Alyssa also mentioned a student who would act out often in the class, and this had a negative for

here from a bullying standpoint because many of the other students would not want to be around

her. She mentioned that she read the book “How Full is Your Bucket?” and that day all of the

students really were nice to each other. I will remember this for when I become a teacher.

Overall, my fieldwork and lesson study have been really beneficial for me to see and

learn about being a great teacher. I plan to emphasize more about TPE 2: Creating and

Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning, because that is very important for

your classroom. I also look forward to continuing my research inside this classroom, and I will

start to observe more outside the class when students feel they are not being watched as closely

because that is when they tend to act more themselves. From what my fieldwork teacher tells me

I will be able to see bullying fairly often. I know that in the past, one student who did a capstone
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on bullying was not able to observe it very much, so I think it would be a good idea to see her

work and maybe follow up where she left off.