Journal: Field Work final lesson

On Thursday Lori and I wrapped up our unit on Native American Legends. After two weeks of having the students write their own "Legends" we were so excited to have them share their storied with each other! We came up with the idea of having a "campfire" since that is traditionally how legends are shared. We pretended to camp out in the classroom with fall leaves spread strewn across the carpet with an ingenious simulated campfire that Lori had concocted out of red paper, firewood, and flashlights. The students enjoyed some trail mix while listening to each other read their tales. After all was shared we had a grand finale of performing a rain dance. It went great! My one regret was having to keep reminding the students to speak up, and even then some of their mumblings were hard to decipher. I was soon wishing I had brought some sort of portable karaoke system so all the students could be heard.

Later when I was reflecting on how the lesson went with Lori and Mrs. Sloan, I told them that I wished I had brought a microphone system. Mrs. Sloan told us that some of the newer classrooms in the school and other schools had a built in sound system with a microphone!

What!? What brilliant person thought of this!? And why is it fair that only newer classrooms could enjoy the benefits of this new luxury? It didn't seem fair to me that in order for Mrs. Sloan to have a microphone system she would have to use her small amount of money she receives at the beginning of the year for various supplies to pay for it. I think that if a district decides to implement a new technology in a school than all the classrooms should get equal fair share, not just newer classrooms....or schools for that matter. It seems there are so many new schools popping up around the valley with bigger and better toys, but what is being done to improve the current state of the older schools? Not much it seems, and any attention these older schools are getting is not equal. Having only a few classrooms with a new sound system demonstrated that.