Learner Analysis Project Part 1

For this assignment, I choose to focus on an eleven-year old, female student in fifth grade.  I will call her Lily.  Lily is a meek student, and sometimes she has trouble speaking out in class and interacting with her peers.  However, her parents say that at home she is much more outgoing, and interacts well with her older sister.  Lily has a passive attitude towards school.  She does not actively participate in activities or assignments, but I can tell that she still enjoys doing well in the subjects that she takes interest in, like science.  Lily fits in well with the classroom because she looks much like her peers.  Most of them are white middle class or lower middle class children, and Lily fits that statistic as well.  I choose Lily specifically because she was diagnosed with dyslexia at the beginning of this school year.

I am a student teacher in this particular context, and I have to keep that in mind as I gather my information.  In this context I am a learner, and Lily is a learner as well.  This means we can have a mutually beneficial relationship as I gather this information.  I learn from her as she learns from me.  I have the ability to work with Lily one-on-one for about twenty minutes each day I am student teaching, and I have also been able to listen in on a SIT meeting for Lily with her parents, the principal, special education teacher, etc.  These are the main contexts in which I have gathered my information.  I think that Lily sees me as a regular teacher whenever I work with her one-on-one, but can still be a little wary of me knowing that I am not her regular classroom teacher, and instead just an extra adult in the room two days a week.

Edison Elementary is located in what one might call an "up-and-coming neighborhood."  The school is in the Highlands which was once home to a poorer demographic, but now through gentrification is somewhere near the middle class.  Most of the students in the school are white, with maybe about 30 percent Hispanic students, and a very small percentage of other races.  The community surrounding the school is extremely supportive and collaborative.  This is especially seen through the community garden located at Edison, where teachers, students, and local residents all share garden plots.

Lily herself does not participate in any after-school programs or extracurricular activities, and I think part of that is because her parents want to concentrate on getting her into tutoring to help her math and reading skills.  Through interviewing Lily, I learned that she enjoys reading, writing, and science.  She definitely does not enjoy math.  One of the interviews I conducted with Lily also included a reading test, where she read a couple of paragraphs out loud to me and I simply made a word count.  She performed well on this test, and is in the 72nd percentile in her grade level for reading.  All of these are good signs, especially following her recent dyslexia diagnosis.  I asked for her feeling towards reading, and she commented that she enjoys it, but only when she can do it in her head.  She does not enjoy reading out loud, because she worries that she will mess up the words.

Choosing to work with Lily was a no-brainer for me and my clinical teacher, mainly because of Lily's recent diagnosis.  This gives me an opportunity to learn more about how a student qualifies for special education services, and how the process affects the student.  My clinical teacher and I have both noticed a lot of positives about Lily as a student, and believe that she will be successful in her entire school career.  During this process, I hope to learn more about how I would help a student with special needs like dyslexia in my own classroom, and how the process of qualifying for special needs services works.

I have already talked with the parents of Lily during our SIT meeting, as well as other school professionals (principal, special education teacher, psychologist, interventionist, etc.) so I will include more of my observations from those interviews later.  Along with this blog post I have attached photos of my classroom, the school/playground, and my observation notebook.

-Jamie