Matt Jones

                           

                         Normandy Elementary                                                                                                        Jefferson County School District
                                 83.2% White                                                                                                                                 67.5% White
                                 10.9% Hispanic                                                                                                                             21.4% Hispanic
                                 2.8% Multi-racial                                 Demographics                                    3.3% Multi-racial
                                 2.9% Asian                                                                                                                                     3.1% Asian
                                 0% Black                                                                                                                                        1.1% Black
                                 0% American Indian                                                                                                                      0.6% American Indian                                              0.2% Pacific Islander                                                                                                                     0.2% Pacific Islander

 

 

 

Community Culture

Normandy Elementary lies near the central area of Littleton, Colorado within a large and sprawling suburban neighborhood. The majority of the students at the school live within the neighborhood allowing many of them to walk to and from school or to take  a short drive/bus ride. Because of the close proximity of the school to where the students live, parents often play a very active role in the school whether it is walking around to their child's classrooms before or after school, atteding conferences, etc. The school also has created a Watch D.O.G.S (Dad's of Great Students) program. The Watch D.O.G.S program is two-fold serving as both added security for the school and its students, but also as a way for fathers to participate in their child's learing as they are free to shadow their child in each of their classrooms. The school is very much a part of the neighborhood in which it resides.

 

 

Classroom Culture

The art room in Normandy is relatively small, however the learning that occurs is tremendous. The Normandy artroom caters to students in grades 1st-6th which provides opportunities to engage in a large array of art-centered explorations using a wide variety of art mediums including clay, plaster, tempra paint, pastels, colored pencils, and markers. A small art room is no excuse to lessen the opportunities for students to create and learn. The classroom culture is structured on the school motto of "Wear your ARMOR." ARMOR stands for:

               -Always Safe

               -Respectful

               -Motivated

               -Own-it

               -Respectful

Students are expected to display these behaviors at all times in the artroom to ensure a safe place for artmaking- everyone is valued and included. In the Normandy artroom it is absolutely critical that all students feel comfortable and safe to explore, learn, and create and that only happens when the teacher creates and ensures that sort of atmosphere. As teachers, we want every student to succeed an display their full potential so its important to support, advocate, and create an environment that achieves that. 

 

In teaching this younger population of learners, structure, consistency, and reinforcement are the fundamentals to managing the classroom. These two elements create routines and expectations from which students can learn and use to guide their own learning, accountability for the student's actions, and they teach life skills which are essential to the development of engaged and compentent adults.

          

 

School-wide Policies and Support

The teachers at Normandy truly strive to ensure they are doing the best job they can, to provide a wholesome and  integrated education for their students. The staff meets once a month to go over announcements from teachers and administrators to the rest of the faculty about things and going on in their classrooms, with their students, or even with themselves. The more the teachers can be on the same page with the happenings in the school, the more unified they can be in teaching Core Knowledge curriculum. 

In regards to classroom management, it is the goal of the teacher to keep their students in class. When students misbehave, are defiant, are acting out, etc., the school believes that it is important to rectify the situation to both ensure the student awkowledges what is expected of them at school and in class, and also to ensure that the student still is given the opprotunity to access the same learning. This is all opposed to sending the kid out of the classroom as a means for discipline- if anything this can put the student behind their peers in what is being learned. Of course if the behavior is serious enough, students are sent to the office to begin with a simple conversation with an administrator of what caused them to be sent there. From that point administration takes appropriate steps to corect the situation.