Hi! My name is Ms. Risse and I teach ARC (Achieving Resilience in Communities) for third through fifth grade students. ARC is a behavior resilience program where at risk students are provided consistent small group instruction, high teacher/student ratio support, and receive critical individual coaching and teaching functional classroom and interpersonal behaviors. The ultimate goal is to provide these students with appropriate social and academic skills so they can one day be included in a general education classroom.
My students all live at least 70% below the poverty line.
They struggle controlling their emotions and exhibiting appropriate social behaviors. We work hard together every day to improve our skills to help them grow into successful adults that can function on their own. We have good days and bad days. The program has proven very successful and it is extremely rewarding to see all of the progress these children are making. At the end of the day, they are all just kids craving structure, love, and someone to believe in them.
My Project
Teaching students in one classroom who are in grades third through fifth has its challenges. My students come in on all different levels academically. With anger and frustration already being a constant struggle, it can be difficult to teach students on their individual academic levels. My students are performing academically at a level significantly lower than other students their age and become very easily frustrated and embarrassed. This causes them to act out and refuse to try or even say they hate learning or they hate school.
Having laptops in the classroom where students can work at their pace and their level privately will help ease frustration and embarrassment and improve motivation and focus.
This will also help keep students on task so myself and my assistants can work one on one individually with other students. We have great software programs in our school for reading and math but unfortunately, many of these students aren't successful in the media center setting as it can be over stimulating and don't get a lot of chances to use technology that could help them be successful in their future careers. In addition to the benefits these programs provide students, they also provide me with important information such as academic strengths and weaknesses to help guide future instruction and lessen the gaps between them and their peers.
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