School Description

CONSEJOS TÉCNICOS ESCOLARES AS A SUPPORT TO IMPROVE THE EDUCATION IN MARIANO MATAMOROS MIDDLE SCHOOL

In the first week of my practice I attended the Consejos Técnicos Escolares (CTE) course. Its purpose is to make a plan to improve the education. The CTE is a course where teachers take decisions and agree what to do during the school year so as to improve the student´s learning.

The course was given six hours a day from Monday to Friday. During the course we did different activities so that teachers could realize the importance of these CTE and the impact it would have on students.

The first activity we did was to analyze (principal, teachers, secretary and I) what CTE meant and its purpose.

Through the week we take agreements to improve the education offered by the school. Simple agreements like:

• Fifty effective minutes of the class.

• Teachers can not miss a class.

• Be on time in the class.

• DO activities that develop literature and math skills on students

These agreements are important to me. Because the reference that some teachers gave to me was “The school Mariano Matamoros offered a bad education”. And that gave me a bad idea about this school but now with these agreements I have a good idea about it.

I think with these agreements this school can improve it education. On the other hand it helped me to be aware about what I need to improve in my teaching practice.

At the end of the course the agreements were wrote in an official document where all the teacher´s staff was engaged to carry out .

I think that this kind of meetings, where the purpose is clear and all the people involved feel that any action they made or any decision they took could be relevant for having good results in student´s learning, are by no means the best way to work in a collaborative group in order to solve any problem that came up in teaching-learning process.

MARIANO MATAMOROS MIDDLE SCHOOL.

The building

This school is located in the downtown of the city, on the corner of twelve and seven street. It is an old construction because it was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The building is very high with square rooms and thick walls. Before being Mariano Matamoros middle school it used to be convent so the building did not have the characteristics for being a school. The furniture was in a very poor condition. The windows were old, the doors were broken, and the chairs and the blackboards were old and damaged.

The school had seven groups three for first grade, two for second graders and two for third graders. There were thirty to thirty -five students in average per group.

School dynamics

The daily live in the school was almost the same. Students had some rules to follow but in an unpleasant way for example they had to arrive five minutes before at the classroom if they needed going to the restroom it was permitted only during the break time. They were not allowed to leave the building and they had to wear properly the school uniform.

It is also important to mention that the school shares the building in the morning shift with an elementary school. Because of that both schools have to organize their activities in the available time for them. For example the elementary school could not do activities in the time of the middle school.

Teachers’ staff

There were eighteen teachers including the principal. Two of them had master degree. The support staff only was three. Most teachers have several years of service and only three teachers are young.

The internal context

The school is small it only had ten rooms. Seven of them are for teaching, one for the principal office, one more for computer lab and one for support staff. There is a small courtyard where there were no plants or places to sit. It made students angry because they need their own space to socialize.

The external context

Like I said before the school is located in the downtown and it is surrounded by mass transport, business stores and a lot of informal sellers for that reason to arrive at the school is very difficult.

Another thing in the external context is the noise. It was terrible and it made difficult to work with it because sometimes students could not hear me and I had to speak louder, other times I had to stop the class because of it.

Class profile

During my performance in Mariano Matamoros Middle School I worked with four groups. Three of them were three first grades and one second grade.

My first grade A was a twenty-eight students group. Sixteen were boys and twelve were girls. In average these students were from twelve to sixteen years old.

Most of my students worked in different places or were informal sellers; some of them helped their parents in the family business. So i inferred their economy was not so good. This affected the learning of my students because they frequently missed classes

The students liked doing different activities such as watching movies, listening TO music among others. Some of them had the ideas of working in order to help their family and others worked because they had in mind to go to the university. What caught my attention was that the majority of this group liked rap music.

Something important about this group is that they failed when they were tested at the beginning of the school year. Only one student got acceptable notes.

The first grade B was twenty-seven students group. Thirteen were girls and fourteen were boys. In average these students were from twelve to fourteen years old. In this group there were students younger than students from group A

A few students worked in first B. It was good because they did not miss classes. they liked doing like watching movies, went to parties, practice sports, listening music or painting graffiti . This group loved rap music and talking about their favorites singers. Many of these students worked and had plans for having a better live.

IN This group I had a student who consumed drugs. At the beginning I thought he could provoke problems in the class and with his classmates but it

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