Prompt - 1 - Description

The middle school that I am serving at this spring semester is an inner city middle school located about a half hour away from my college via walking, so I have the opportunity every Thursday morning to take my time to walk to the school and absorb in the local culture in which the school is situated. I would say this much right away: this middle school is not in the heart of the projects. There are certainly worse places that this school could be in the city. But in relation to English literacy, I made note of a store that is directly across the street from the coffee shop that I stop by every Thursday. The signs and writing on the store are all in Spanish, so I have not a clue what they are selling, except that whatever services they are providing are available "Monday - Sunday." In addition to to this store, there are other cultural/linguistic references on other businesses -- many of them have signs that are bilingual and include English and Spanish.

Typically, when I arrive at the school in the morning about 15 minutes prior to homeroom, students are arriving to converse and play among themselves outside. One group usually always has a football being tossed around, while others may just stand in groups with their friends talking. When the whistle is blown, the students line up at the front door with heavy sacks and sodden looks underneath a quote from the states favorite philanthropist: "The greatest achievement of all is to help better the lives of others." The office where I sign in has bright, yellow walls and is well-lit, but the secretaries always seem busy; in fact, on my first day of arrival at the school, they did not even know I was coming. Above the lockers on my way to my classroom, I always notice little signs that say "Attend School" in black and white Microsoft WordArt. As for the classroom itself that I serve in, the paint in the upper left corner of the room from where the teachers desk is, is a light blue that is peeling away and exposing the white underbelly of the wall. One of the screens in the window has a hole in it, but at least the heater near the window is always warm. Everywhere around the room are papers and posters pasted on the walls and blackboards that cover every device of grammar in the English language. While in one way the room is spacious, in another way it is small, which is something I will cover in my analysis in the next entry. The last description I will leave my with is this: While the students all come from very diverse and culturally rich backgrounds, white is the minority in this room. I hate to say that this classroom descriptively represents the stereotypical inner city classroom (I myself, believe stereotypes to be an abomination), but it isn't too far from the truth.