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Third Classroom Visit Report

On my third visit to an elementary school classroom, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a

grade 6 math class, and a grade 5 science class. The focus of this classroom visit was on parental

involvement and cultural responsiveness, however, not much was founded on this topic. To

compensate, I will revisit the first classroom visit report, which touched on cultural

responsiveness, and on personal experiences from when I was a student. To achieve the goals of

the focus, a teacher would need to implement the third, seventh, and ninth competencies

(Ministère de l'éducation, 2001). The paper will be split into a parental section and a cultural

responsiveness section, with any information relevant to future observations being mentioned in

the conclusion.

School is not just about teacher and student relationships, as the parent is very much a

factor in the educational development of children (Pushor, 2017). Looking at the ninth

competency, the teacher should be notifying the parents of their child’s progress, whether good

or bad, and working with the parents to ensure that the child receives as many resources as

possible (Ministère de l'éducation, 2001). One such way a teacher can do this is through

technology, which was seen on this observation. The teacher used a program to allow parents to

see their comments on the child and allow the parents to give feedback to the child themselves.

This allows the parents to follow the progress of the children in the classroom, but without the

ability to see marks as the teacher does not believe in giving grades. This is like what was

observed in the grade 5 classroom in the first observation, where the parents were notified of

their child’s progress in a weekly newsletter. The parents can also be brought into the classroom

environment to teach, something that I have witnessed first hand in my classroom experiences

(Pushor, 2017).
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When I was in elementary school, the parents of one of my classmates came to our school

to teach us about Native American culture, as the classmate and his family came from a reserve.

This gave the class a new perspective on how different people have different point of views

depending on their cultural backgrounds. This is important in the third and seventh

competencies, which focuses on catering education towards including all cultural backgrounds

and ensuring that the lessons are effective for all (Ministère de l'éducation, 2001). The most

common observation on this topic is the use of language in the classroom, as students speak both

English and French amongst themselves while working. They would switch between the two, as

they talked about their weekends or on what bridges they would research for the science fair.

Besides this observation, not much else was shown on cultural responsiveness, besides the first

observation where the teacher was reading Front Desk, a story about an immigrant in New York

(Yang, 2018). The first observation classroom is also filled with books from different cultural

backgrounds, as the teacher is an advocate for cultural inclusivity (Adichie, 2009). In my

classroom, I would also like to add a world map with the student’s pinning their name to their

country of origin, so that the student’s can see how they all come from around the world but are

all from the same world (King Jr., 1947). The classroom is not just about learning the

curriculum, as there is also the need to ensure students feel welcomed, something that is done by

introducing their social and family life into the classroom (Ministère de l'éducation, 2001).

As for the observation itself, not much was recorded as the teacher not only had us

observers, but also a fourth-year university student who will be teaching the classroom for

thirteen weeks starting in January 2020. As his primary focus was ensuring this student-teacher

was prepared to teach, the lessons were more relaxed, and less information could be observed.

The biggest observation made was based on technological use, as the teacher use this to send
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documents to the students to access using Google Docs, and had them work together on a power

point using Google Slides. Besides the use of technology, not much else was observed during

this visit.
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References

Adichie, C. N. (2009). The danger of a single story [Video file]. Retrieved from

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story

King Jr., M. L. (1947). The purpose of education. Morehouse College Student Paper. Retrieved

from https://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/thepurposeofeducation.htm

Ministère de l'éducation. (2001). Teacher training: Orientations, Professional Competencies.

Québec: Ministère de l'éducation.

Pushor, D. (2017). Family centric schools. Education Canada, 57(4). Retrieved from

https://www.edcan.ca/articles/familycentric-schools/

Yang, K. (2018). Front Desk. New York, NY; Arthur A. Lavine Books.