Demographics
George Washington Carver Elementary School has preschool to fifth grade level students. It is located in Richmond City with a population of 500 students. Carver and most of Richmond City is heavily populated with African Americans. The overall student membership is 23,775 and 80% of that population is African American. 1
The schools in Richmond city also have a dense population of African American children. According to the 2010 census there were 561 African American students that make up the population in the schools of Richmond City. There has also not been much change in racial makeup of the population in the communities throughout the city. Many of our students at Carver Elementary come from Jackson Ward and Gilpin Court neighborhoods, which is at the heart of Richmond City. My school, George Washington Carver Elementary School, is located very close to Virginia Commonwealth University and we are very close to the campus and some of the surrounding housing is made up of college students. Many of the houses in front of our school consist of older people who do not have children. The only way that we would be able to have more of a diverse racial population would be by having an integration method and bringing over students from other areas of the city.
Most of the neighborhoods in the Richmond City area arepublic housing projects, which were made for the dense population of low socioeconomic families that are in the area. Therefore, most of the students at Carver Elementary come from low socioeconomic home environments and from the public housing project, such as Gilpin Court. Many of these students come to school not ready to learn because their basic needs have not been met before coming to school. This hinders the students from being active learners; which creates a challenging task for the students to get homework done and find after school assistance at home. Most of our students are on free lunch services and participate in a backpack program, which provides the students with food items for the weekend. This program is meaningful piece of background knowledge, which allows students to relate to the unit because they understand the value of food and do not take it for granted. This can help facilitate good discussions about how food is very important in our daily lives.
Even with those struggles students are expected to go to school, meet state standards and pass standardized test. In our schools the students have a full day of reading, math, science, and social science. The students also receive daily forty-five minutes of an extracurricular activity throughout the week, which includes art, music, library, computer or physical education. I am the Spanish teacher and teach them forty-five minutes of Spanish once a week. Coming in to teach them Spanish can be challenging at times because of the high learning demand and academic goals that need to be met. The best instructional method for these students has to be attention grabbing and interactive. It is also important to incorporate hand-on activities and involve technology tools for the students to be able to explore and solve problems. They have better understanding of the concepts with visual aids and demonstration of what they are learning. Teaching this population of students can be very challenging but very rewarding.
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