Case Study Student

Rachel Lorenzo

10/11/11

LAE 4530.001

Tara Payor & Nina Graham

Case Study Student Interview

Do you enjoy leisurely reading? School reading?

Yes. Yes I do. I like suspenseful book or ones that are about girls my age that are going through things I'm going through, things like that. My school reading, sometimes, in English I read Of Mice and Men and I liked that book. It's a really cute story. We're reading this story about how fast food is bad for you, we're reading that in AP Lang right now. And I like To Kill a Mockingbird, that one's really good too.

What do you like/dislike about English?

Right now I like English, it's one of my classes actually. Ms. Rich was my teacher last year and she's really good. I don't like vocabulary, like the figurative language and stuff. It's hard to understand what the difference is between all of them, if the definitions were more clear it'd be easier.


What do you do after school? (extracurricular, routines?)

Well after school today I'm going to work on the float. School spirit and all that stuff. And I do have some clubs that I'm joining this year and for the most I go to school and I do homework. And sometime I cook dinner, sometimes my mom cooks dinner and I help my little brother with his homework. I joined ASL, I joined Friends Who Care, which we go to hospitals and talk to little kids and stuff. I haven't done it yet cause it's a new club to the school.

Last year this kid came to our school, his name is Vincent, and he's deaf so we couldn't talk. But he's really nice, we wrote letters to him where we wrote to him and he wrote back to us. And that's the only way we could really communicate so that's what really pushed me to want to know ASL so I could talk to him better.


How much time do you spend on homework nights and weekends?

A lot. Like. 20 minutes for each class I have homework. Like I don't have homework for each class all the time but I have a lot of homework. Most of it's English too.


What are your favorite classroom activities?

Um. Group stuff I like doing group stuff. I like to see what other people have to say and stuff. In my English class our teacher always gets us to read these passages, it's called "Red Hot Help," and we read them and we annotate them by ourselves and we get together with a group and look at questions and see which ones we want to pick to answer. It's really good and helpful cause you get to see someone else's point of view and you get to see how this is the right answer. 

What is a country/culture you would like to learn more about? (Your own?)

About like Japanese, it's pretty interesting because like when the whole thing happened with the Pearl Harbour thing, everyone discriminated against them because of that. And also Muslims because of the 9/11 thing, people discriminated against them all the time. I think it's unfair because they weren't the specific ones who did it so I'd like to learn more about their cultures.

What is it that teachers just don’t get?

They don't get that we have other classes that we need to focus on. Like we have so much homework. And if we tell them that we forgot this homework they don't get that we are human, we make mistakes, we wake up late and just forget things. They should give us a little bit of free pass a one time thing.


Has a teacher inspired you? How? Why?

Last year I had intensive reading and I thought it was pretty cool cause she taught us a lot of SAT words cause I'm taking the SAT's this year so I'm really nervous. But she taught us a lot of the words but she did it by song. I'm always thinking about being a teacher. And I look at my teachers to see what I'd do different and what I do like about them.

What would make English or any class fun while learning?

Don't just make us copy down notes and just them talk. Like let us do group work and do different things to make it different like go outside and do things outside like make games and do the learning that way.

What advice would you have for me as a teacher?

Don't be a pushover cause if you're a pushover they'll stomp all over you. Like my new history teacher this year, he's new to high school and he doesn't know what he's doing. I like him but he lets everyone run his class, he should be the one saying, "We're going to do this."

What do you think about Springboard?

I don't like SpringBoard, I think it's a waste of time. I only have it for English. Some people have it for math too.

Do you like/dislike how students are tested? (Multiple Choice, FCAT, etc.)

I don't really like multiple choice much. I like extended response cause then you get to explain your reasoning.

How do you feel about keeping a daily journal as homework?

I think that'd be cool and I'd do it more than the others.

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Reflection
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I was very impressed with this student. She obviously cares for her education and enjoys English. It was interesting to find that she is learning ASL because she was inspired by a student who is deaf. Hearing stories like this really makes me look forward to having a classroom with diverse students, even with diverse abilities. ASL has gained popularity lately and I would not be surprised to hear that it's partly because of classroom inclusion.

When she first mentioned that she wanted to learn about the Japanese culture, I admittedly thought, "Oh, yeah, lots of kids do because it's popular now and they like anime." But she really surprised me by tying her interests with history. She wanted to learn about both cultures because of past and current discrimination they have endured because of attacks and warfare. It's exciting that students make ties already with history and their interests. One of my goals as a teacher is to make students aware of current events, issues, and news that the media does not cover because they would not get ample ratings. Knowing that students may already be interested in learning more about this makes me want to see this goal into fruition even more.

I caught some classroom activities teachers use from my case study student's answers. The "Red Hot Help" activity is one I hadn't heard of before but sounds great. It is used for an AP class though because it's a very independent activity. It's possible to modify this to fit any classroom though, especially if the teacher does the activity along with the students.

I wanted to shout for joy when she said she liked classroom activities the most! For four years I have heard that these are the best to use with students in my education classroom at USF. While I agree with the theories and teachers' anecdotes on using group work, I was always skeptical. I remember either being very off task, letting someone else do all the work, or doing all the work myself when I had group work in high school. It's good to know that this isn't the only thing that goes on and that students like learning from each other. From her answer, I would surmise that students feel more comfortable and confident in their answers knowing that they have built up their knowledge with others. This is essence and beauty of group work and I'm glad to see it works.

Daily or at least regular journals are something I wish my teachers would have had us do and I would like to give my students. The student seemed excited to hear of daily journals as homework, especially when I explained that sometimes their would be assigned topics and other times there would be free writes. I want my students to be able to express themselves and what is going on in their lives. This way I can also keep communication with them. I promise I thought of this idea way before we saw the Freedom Writers clips in class and I've never seen the movie!

I feel more confident in my ideals and goals as a teacher after this interview.

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Assignment as if Case Study Student
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Sounds are
Indistinguishable to him, so
Goes the chatter.
Never have I been so conscious of my

Lips, his lips - now
Answers to each
Need that otherwise
Generates itself
Unthinkingly through
A twist of canals.
Guide mine with your mirror image,
Educate these hands.