Context Paper

In Mrs. Paks 5th-grade classroom at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, there are 27

students: 11 male students and 16 female students. Their ages vary from 10 to 11 years old. Most

of students, with more than 90% of the students, were fluent in Spanish. According to Mrs. Pak,

they are all identified as ELL learners. There are a great amount of students who have not grown

up learning English in their homes as their first language. There is one female student who cannot

speak in English but only speaks and understands in Spanish. However, Mrs. Pak speaks only in

English during the lesson. The student gets help from other peers to let them translate what Mrs.

Pak is saying for the student. Also, there are only two race and ethnicities, hispanic and only a few

African American students: 22 Hispanics and 5 African Americans in the classroom. While in a

conversation with Mrs. Pak told me that the students come to school from a distant place by car to

find a school that fulfills what the parents need for their kids such as giving free breakfast and

lunch. This clearly shows that these students come from a low to low middle class group. The

students are really proud of their Hispanic culture and likes to talk about their culture in front of

me. Mrs. Paks classroom is organized with 5 sets of 3 desks that are made into a T shape. Also,

there is a carpet area for the students to do some brain exercises on the side of the whiteboard, a

laptop table for the students to do some drills provided on the back of the classroom, and a small

room for the students to be tutored beside the laptop table. In addition to the classroom setting,

there are chromebooks for the students to utilize in reinforcing the decimals drills that could be

applicable to the content of this unit plan.

In Cesar Chavez Elementary school, the students are from K-5th grade. There are roughly

2 to 3 classes for each grade level. The school is a public school where it has a partnership with

the Kent School Services Network. There are 48% Female students and 52% Male students in the
school. They do use the common core standards but the teachers have to constantly come up with

their own set of worksheets and tests for the students to work with. Having 19:1 as the states

average ratio of teachers to students, Cesar Chavez Elementary School has 24:1 which exceeds the

state standards average. Also, the percent of the teachers with more than 3 or more years is 91%

which meets the state standards. Their academics, specifically the test scores, does show that the

students in the school are struggling in their English (18%), Math (15%), Science (5%), and Social

Studies (5%) tests. The school seems to have mostly 2 race/ethnicity where 82% of the students

are Hispanic, 12% of the students are African-American students, and 6% from other ethnicities.

Their socioeconomic status shows that 96% of the students come from a low income family.

One interesting fact about the community is that Cesar Chavez Elementary School is the

bus station for other students that is sponsored by other Kent County Services Network schools.

60% of the students come to school by car, 30% of the students just walk to school and 10% of the

students take the school bus to come to school. Like Cesar Chavez Elementary School, the local

community is basically composed of Hispanic and African American families. However, the

schools local community only has some features of Hispanic communities like a Hispanic

supermarket, a Taco shop, Center for Hispanic West Michigan, and etc. This shows that there are

more Hispanic people around the community. According to the Aimee Garcia, the principle of the

school, said that the school has a strong sponsorship with the parents because there are variety of

Hispanic parents who stay until its time for the students to go in the school and the rate of parents

coming to the Parent Teacher Conference is high. The community of the school provides students

with the culture of the Hispanic community where it is in their usual community.

Consequently, I would be mindful of myself to respect the essence of the students to

consider how the students value much about their culture. I would also incorporate the different
learning styles for they will be different everyday in learning the content that I have prepared. I

would try to use the ELA thread with the Mathematics Unit because most of the students are

considered ELL students. I can do this by asking to explain their thinking with words most of the

time. This experience is really crucial for me and the students because we are learning in various

ways.

Retrieved from http://www.grps.org/cesarchavez

Explore Cesar E. Chavez Elementary in Grand Rapids, MI. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.greatschools.org/michigan/grand-rapids/1728-Cesar-E.-Chavez-Elementary/