Reflection 2

Reflect on how classroom culture and environment impacted your

student teaching experience. Discuss specific demographic
characteristics of the school, support structures within the school
including your classroom routines, the staff, community, parents, and
volunteers. Identify ways in which these components influenced your
classroom environment and management procedures.
The demographics of Prairie Heights Middle School (PHMS) are
not listed on the Greeley district website or on the schools website.
However, it can be said that the student population at PHMS is diverse
with a large chunk of the population being Hispanic and of Asian
decent. Furthermore, there is a significant population of students who
are English Language Learners (ELL). The student population at PHMS
is one that lacks structure and so strict classroom management in the
form of Boys Town was implemented all semester.
It was seen during parent teacher conferences that many of the
students with Hispanic heritage came from a household where English
was the second language learned. This made it important for me to
have images to go along with any instruction in order for these
students to be able to link the instruction with their prior knowledge of
the images. Behavior management was key in optimizing instruction
time due to the many extroverted personalities at PHMS. In conclusion,
my classroom management skills grew significantly during my student
teaching placement at PHMS due to the necessity of structure in order
to maximize student learning.