I am student teaching at Paul and Sheila Wellstone Elementary in downtown St. Paul. My student teaching experience is inspiring and exhausting. Below is my second journal entry for my seminar class at Hamline. I was proud of it after I wrote it, so here it is:

The School and its culture
Wellstone elementary is situated on the riverfront in downtown St. Paul in an eight floored building. On the first floor is the front office, a community meeting room, the cafeteria, a swimming pool, a pre-k room, two kindergarten rooms, and a second grade classrooms. The eighth floor houses sixth grade, and all the other grades are found in between. The principal's office is on the fifth floor along with the teachers' lounge, the school nurse, and copy room and teacher mailboxes. The assistant principal's office is on the sixth floor along with some fifth grade classrooms, the school counselor's office, and several special education and speech and language specialists' offices. So, our school is very spread out. Several days can pass and I won't see anyone but the teachers on my floor, and the fourth grade teachers who have lunch at the same time I do everyday.
School culture is based largely on the Responsive Classroom model. Each classroom has rules that are established by the students and signed into accordance by all students and the teacher. Each class starts its day with a morning meeting. Each class has a “take a break” spot (or more than one), and teachers occasionally use “buddy passes” where a student will be sent out of their classroom and into a neighboring classroom with the goal of the student reconcentrating, calming down, and then returning to their own classroom when they feel that they are ready. Each week we have a Friday whole school morning meeting lead by our principal where we hear announcements appropriate for the whole school: a kick off of fundraising, watching a cheer squad performance, and learning about family open houses have been a few of our topics so far.
The classroom

Room 203 hosts two dual-immersion classrooms. The kindergarteners are on the far side of the classroom from the door upon entrance. One of their walls on that side of the classroom is made up of windows. The first grade classroom is on the other side of a partially divided wall from the kindergarten. Both teachers and an EA (and myself) share an office space in a loft-like area connected to the first grade half of the classroom that was once used as a reading recovery office and small group classroom space. When both classes are in our space we have fifty two students, two teachers and an aid for approximately four hours of the day, (cut up into about half hour chunks. She is shared between all three dual-immersion classrooms, kindergarten through second grade.)
On the kindergarten side of the room (which is really more L shaped, than half of the room) we have a small library space (currently unused), a teacher workspace (kidney shaped table), six student tables with between four and six students at each table, two shelves where students' supplies are kept, a lego table, a small “house” area complete with baby beds, play refrigerators, play stove and oven, play sink, play pantry and shelves, and a pretend store front with a plastic cash register. We also have a “car” carpet, where students often play with a small wooded train set during free-choice time, and we have a morning meeting rug and a bulletin board where we have our daily calendar math lesson.
Student tables are labeled with colored shapes: the purple rectangle table, the red circle table, the orange diamond table, the green triangle table, the yellow square table, and the blue oval table. Each student's space at the table is marked by the corresponding colored shape with their name on it. My teacher had not done this before, but I have found in past experiences that it makes it easier to dismiss and group students quickly for transitions and small group work. All of the students' supplies are also labeled with the appropriate colored shape as well. I hope to add pictures of their contents soon (as we're starting to get several different boxes of supplies: glue sticks, scissors, color crayons and colored pencils). Students use Ticonderoga pencils and there are enough pencils for each student to use them at the same time. Erasers are not used (or encouraged to be used, evidentally). If students make a mistake, they cross it out and write more.

Me and My Philosophy
I am dedicated to my personal vocation to teach. I believe that education, curiosity and a love of learning are powerful tools that my students can take with them out into the world, better equipped to joyously work toward the goal of a better world, where social justice and equality are the inspiring reality.
Schools train children how to fit into society. When they are new to school, we teach them to sit still, we teach them to wait. We teach them to put their names in the top left corner (or right corner) of every page that they turn in to us. We teach them when it is appropriate to sharpen their pencils, how long they have to eat, play outside, and go to the bathroom. When they are older, we teach them to keep their work spaces clean, we attempt to teach them societal norms for behavior and manners. No one who has been to a school, will deny that schools have the monopoly on teaching societal rules. We hold children in one place longer than any activity in their day (other than sleeping, we hope).
If society is taught in schools, why not take that opportunity to help teach our children how to actually take part in forming a better society- a society where roles of all kinds are split more equally between people. I can model that in my classroom by attempting to keep equality and fairness at the front of my mind. Student roles and ability to help our classroom family should be modeled, taught and scaffolded.
Students will only experience academic success if they know that success is expected of them. I believe that every child can learn, and it will be my responsibility as a teacher to decode how each of my students learn best, and provide the environment and the opportunities for each of them to experience motivating success. I believe in the importance of recognizing and teaching to the multiple intelligences. In this, I want to be unique as a teacher; I don't want to teach only as I learn, but I want to reach all my students by frequently using different types of activities, centered around multiple intelligences and different learning styles.
The best teachers that I have had in my life were the teachers that gave me the ingredients for success, and then sat back and watched as I worked toward it. They were always helpful, and supportive but never enabling. I want to be a resource and reference for my students' learning. I want to be the architect of a community where all learners (including myself) feel safe to take risks and feel valued as an essential part of a learning family.
I am a strong believer in not only being a local citizen, but being a global citizen as well. World cultures, foods, music, and traditions will be integral tools in my classroom. I want my students to be engaged, involved, and aware of the concentric circles in human society throughout our world. I believe that exposure to global culture not only builds empathy and curiosity about people different from ourselves, but it also nurtures a pride in one's own community and culture as well.
As is evident, I don't take my role as a teacher lightly. I know that the education that students leave my classroom with – not only academic facts, but their abilities to understand themselves, relate to others, problem solve, and live in the broader world, will affect them for their whole lives. I am excited (and overly eager) to become a classroom elementary school teacher, and I am ready to be exhausted with learning.

The Students
My students are inspiring, exhausting, hungry and wiggly.
My students are wiggly. They NEED to move at least every fifteen minutes and usually more often than that. I am learning all kinds of songs and activities to keep them moving in positive ways instead of poking each other, putting strange things in their mouths or throwing things that should definitely not be thrown.
My students are hungry- to learn and for food. Every student in my class has qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. Most of my students do not eat breakfast in their homes. Often an hour after they have been fed breakfast in the school cafeteria, they complain that they are hungry. One of my students is a snack hoarder- I catch him with extra napkins full of crumbly crackers in his pockets, or an extra rice krispy bar will go missing, and I'll find it in his backpack at the end of the day. Some of my students are hungry to learn. All of my students want to learn to read, some of my students already do read (which we're trying to “diagnose” levels right now, one of them reads at at least a second grade level!)
My students are exhausting. There are so many of them (twenty eight) that just keeping track of all of them takes a lot of thinking and multi-tasking. They all need so much attention and approval. Like most five and six-year-olds, they like to receive attention from adults “in-charge” in any form that they can get it. Some of my students are naughty and do things that make it hard to teach the other students, but most of them are just fairly normal kindergarteners that require a lot of patience and reminding about well, almost everything.
My students are inspiring. They are brave. Many of them are afraid of so many things and still come to school every day from sometimes scary homes, scary bus stops several blocks from their homes and scary buses with big kids who don't speak Spanish. They walk into school everyday and are greeted by (now familiar looking) adults who don't greet them in their first language. They shuffle through confusing and disorganized breakfast lines in the cafeteria and then are barked at by a woman (the lunch lady) who believes that if she shouts something in English loud enough, they'll somehow understand her better. I see my students hunched shoulders and scared eyes when they walk in through the doorway every morning, and I watch the scared melt away as they are greeted in their native language by my mentor teacher an I, and then go about doing their morning jobs with other similarily scared peers who at least speak a language they understand.
Many of my students have an entire set of knowledge that I don't have. I don't know what it is like to visit someone in jail, or what it's like to be living “bajo de la raya” as the child of a resident who is undocumented (some would say illegal immigrant. I don't believe that any human being can be illegal; they can have an undocumented and therefore illegal status of citizenship, but just as in education, I choose to acknowledge the individual and then their assigned label.). I don't know what it's like to go to bed hungry and not get breakfast until I get to school in the morning. I don't know what it is like to not have a car, or know anyone who has a car (that works).
My students have rotting teeth, rely on teacher-provided school supplies, backpacks and often clothes (hats, mittens, winter coats and boots), some of them have parents who do not know how to read or write, some have family members that are not responsible for them, or put them in dangerous situations, some have families who keep them up late, don't feed them nutritiously, and can't affort to bring them to the doctor or dentist when they are sick or hurt. Many of my students come from homes that are stable, safe, or comfortable, but as far as I can tell so far, most do not have the luxury of all three of these things. Despite this, my students are mostly very good to each other. They take care of each other and support each other. They are forming a very closely knit classroom family that is inspiring to watch unfold.