Getting My Toes into the Water

/ Hannah Hawley-Munford

Hello everyone,

This week was my first week doing my service learning project at Ballard High School. For this project we are to work with children and apply the HOPE principles to what we are seeing in the classroom. Tuesday April 21st, 2015 was my first day at Ballard High School and it was a day to say the least. I knew from my past with special education teachers that this experience could be a bad one if I were to be under a teacher whom was not in love with their job. However, that is what I got on Tuesday I walked into a classroom where the teacher could have cared less if I had even entered the room. I found him sitting on his computer looking at images on Facebook. Students walked freely in and out of the classroom with not so much as a turn of a head. And the teacher was asked if he could help them with homework quite a few times and all the teacher said was figure it out yourself. This teacher also ignored if the students had IEPs or if they needed medication. This teacher simply did not care. So I ended up teaching a boy how to do some physical science homework and really connected with him.

Thursday was my second day at Ballard High School, where I was paired with a new teacher would was filled with joy while teaching. You could see his smile grow as students grasped a new concept. This teacher showed that he really did love and care for these children. He had us break up into groups and work with children. The boy that I connected with on Tuesday was sent to this teachers room to get help, which really made me happy because I really connected with him and he got put into my group so we continued to work on physical science. Then at the end of the class the teacher had the class play some games that helped the students learn to communicate better with the other students, which lead to better conversation and more active learning. I feel like this teacher really works well with the H principles 1, 3, and 5 so far from what I have seen in the classroom. I am excited to learn more as I go on this journey with Ballard High School.

Thanks for reading,

Hannah Hawley

4 thoughts on “Getting My Toes into the Water”

  1. Hi Hannah!

    I loved this post because of the honesty that you saw about how not every teacher is going to have a passion for what they do. I find this really sad because these kids need teachers now more than ever. I am glad that you got to change teachers and be with someone that actually cares about what they do.

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  2. Hannah,

    Thank you for your post. I’m really glad that you are enjoying volunteering at Ballard High School. It is interesting that two teachers can be so different within the same school or even the same department. I wonder why the teacher in the first class was so unmotivated to help their students. It is especially sad and appaling that this is supposed to be a special education classroom and the teacher was on Facebook. In my experience, I have also experienced teachers who do not care about their students development and learning. If teachers do not want to teach, then they should not be in a classroom. Thank you Hannah for sharing.

    -Kelby

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