Blog Two Demographics of the School

     I have been attending my volunteering progam for two months now. I volunteer at an Elementary School in South Providence.The neighborhood looks a lot like the neighborhoods in some of the third world countries that I have visited. Walking the streets there reminds me of Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico and Nicaragua. They remind me of these countries because there are churches and stores with Spanish only lettering and the "haciendas" sell fruit and soda on the outside curb (when its warm).
     The school itself is very tiny. My volunteer hours start at 9am when the school opens and there is always children running around in and out of the building. There are no crossing gaurds, which struck me as very odd. Children are allowed to come and go as they please and they are often crossing the roads by themselves, with their parents watching them from the safety of their car. This struck me as odd as most schools that I have ever attended myself or volunteered for have been very strict about having crossing gaurds.
     The school is pretty plain. There are very little drawings, if any, on the walls. The kindergarden classroom is actually very colorful, with pictures the kids have drawn and various book characters adorning the walls. It is an ESL classroom and all of the students are from a Spanish speaking country. The teacher is very nice and strict with the students, implimenting dicipline InfoWorks.Com told me that my school receives the least amount of funding out of all of the school's in Providence, but I didn't notice because there were 5 computers in the classroom and plenty of other educational materials.
     The teacher always had control of the classroom. Since most of the students, having it be September and only being in school for a month, couldn't really speak English, it was interesting to see the structure of the classroom. The teacher made a point of the English language through repetition. The students seemed to be learning the English language through repetition of vowel sounds and the construction of words. They seemed to have a very neat, orderly routine. The students enter the classroom, take off their coats, sit, hands folded, knees crossed, down on the front mat of the classroom. They listen to music and (try to) sing along with the words.
     The infoworks website states that the school population is dived into: 62% Hispanic, 17% Asian, 12% African-American and 8% White. 91% of the students are eligible for free lunch. 36% of students have English are their second lanuage. These statistics basically back up what I am saying as far as diversity goes- as my ESL classroom is entirely made up of Hispanics. My first grade classroom is mostly Hispanic, having a few children from Asian countries.
     After viewing the infoworks website, I can see that the schools falls short in state requirements for testing, with some of the lowest test scores in all of Providence. The children in my classroom, due to their language disadvantage, are not exempt from these statistics. The teacher was telling me how most of the children in the classroom are not expected to graduate from highschool.
     The kids themselves are really nice and playful, if not incredibly loud. I am looking forward to working with them more.