I would say that the number one thing that I learned from the students in my PDS is that I should never assume anything! On my first day in my PDS I met a female student who behaved very well and participated avidly. This led me to believe that she was a good student who earned excellent grades. However, this was apparently the way she started out every school year, before sliding into a daily routine of disrupting class and consistently “forgetting” to do her assignments. Therefore, this taught me to never assume that the way a student starts out the school year is the way that he or she will continue to behave. Also, through this situation, my host teacher taught me to never give up trying to adjust the behavior of a student, especially if you know he or she is capable of more.
A second thing that I learned from the students in my PDS is that I do not believe that ninth grade students are mature enough to be included in the high school. While I do not think that they should remain in middle school another year, I wish that there was some sort of separation between the ninth graders and the upperclassmen. I say this mainly because of their classroom behaviors. They were extremely disruptive, most had several missing assignments, and they were constantly asking for extra credit for things that had nothing to do with class work. They would also say and do inappropriate things and had no problem punching one another and calling names. These behaviors make me worry about the way they may act in situations when they are around the upperclassmen (sporting events, assemblies, dances, etc.).
The third thing I learned from the students in my PDS is that, if given the opportunity, they will skip. This is something that I discovered was a school wide problem and not just an issue my host teacher. There were constantly students in the halls during class times and oftentimes I would see students walking off school property in order to go to restaurants or stores during their lunch or even class time. It made me realize the issues that come with having a school so close popular social centers.
