Boltz Middle School is overall great and they are establishing a great culture by making

the kids come first and by trying new methods as well when it comes to kids and teaching. One

of the cultures that the students see on a daily basis and learn is social emotional learning. This

practice at Boltz encourages the students to develop themselves to help them with their academic

progress. It also makes educators respect and value young adolescents. There are some programs

at Boltz that focus on social emotional learning but Boltz offers other programs to build a strong

community and focus on what the students enjoy. The best program or programs I have seen

while I was at Boltz is their sports teams. I personally never had sports when I was in middle

school and I wish I did because my friends and I rarely ever played competitively together. If we

did, we usually did it through club teams and were usually on different teams. I think sports can

bring together a group of students that may not usually come together which is why it creates

community. The best way parents are involved in the school is the family liaison. There are

people assigned to families that may not be able to speak English well giving every kid equal

access to education. Also to build on the culture, Boltz encourages appropriate behavior by doing

student shout outs every week. Boltz has done a great job building a community especially since

it has a wide diverse demographic with a heavy Latino population and has a lot of students with

financial needs. This is why social emotional learning is great for Boltzs and I think it's their

main mission as well as the overall learning environment.

I would say that most of my kids were enthusiastic and rambunctious. There were a few

that are more reserved but they were still always excited and having fun while in P.E. They just

hung out more with their few specific friends and could really care less if I was in there. Only a

few of my students were more mature than the typical 6th grade student but the majority were

your typical 6th graders. They were cursing thinking it was cool and had no filter still like little
kids. All my students had a wide range of different interests and abilities. The majority of them

played a sport one way or another and they all were able to participate in anything we did in P.E.

Our class culture was very great especially with everyone participating and everyone playing

with everyone no matter their “social” status. There were some sportsmanship issues early on but

the students learned from it especially through restorative conversations with each other. The

demographics of my students were very similar to the schools overall demographics. A large

Latino population when it comes to boys and girls as well as white students.

Most of the instructional strategies used by Mr. Janicki was being short and sweet. He

understands that kids don’t have the attention span to sit there and listen forever especially since

he came from an elementary school. He does get all his information across still that is important

for them to learn. Mr. Janicki also does not tell the students to be quiet, he just waits for them to

be ready and for them to give him their ultimate attention. Because ultimately P.E is a fun class

and they are just wasting their own time. There were very few if not none assessments in Mr.

Janicki’s class. It was more a “try your best” attitude everyday. So basically just show up and
participate. The few assessments that we did were the pacer and push up test. But Mr. Janicki

didn’t grade those and just wanted them to do their best and they should work on making goals.