About My Classroom

Student Population

Mountain View Elementary School (MVES) serves students in grades Pre-K through 5th. It is a Title 1 school in the rural area of Mountain View, HI. I am in my 4th year of working there as a Third Grade teacher. MVES has just under 500 students, and most qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Students are typically a mix of Native Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino, Pacific Islander, and White. There is also a growing population of Micronesian students, mostly Marshallese and Chuukese. 

Programming and Resources

We are a community school, meaning that there are many resources for the greater community on campus. For example, we have a public library, a food bank, and a nurse on campus for the community to make use of. Outside of class, students are able to participate in Extracurricular Learning Opportunities (ELO's) such as Hula, Basketball, Robotics, Book Club, and Math Support. Our school also has a relatively new PTA.

Special Considerations and Circumstances for Instruction

MVES has quite a mobile population, so many students join or leave the school throughout the year. This means that teachers are ready to work with students at all levels of academic ability. Additionally, this is a Title 1 school, with the majority of our students qualifying for free lunch. The community also experiences high rates of incarceration, poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, and drug abuse, which can cause struggles with learning and leads many students to perform below grade-level standards. To take this into consideration, we are a trauma-informed school.

My Additional Roles and Responsibilities

Outside of the classroom, I am the Secretary on our PTA board. I also am a hula dancer with a halau (hula group) that that performs traditional hula and is affiliated with MVES.

More information about MVES can be found at this link

My Classroom

I teach a 3rd grade inclusion classroom of 18 students. However, I do have two students who split their time between my class and a fully self-contained class where they get more targeted instruction in their core subjects such as ELA and Math. 

Student Demographics

The demographics of my classroom reflect that of the school overall, albeit with a higher ratio of students who have special needs. About half of the students receive special education due to a learning disability, typically ADHD or Autism. Our population is quite transient, so it is quite likely that I will be receiving additional students and helping other students transition to other schools throughout the year.

In my experience, teaching can be an amazing tool to help all people achieve their goals, no matter how big or small. In my own family, education has allowed us to jump social classes in a generation, something that would be virtually impossible otherwise. Thus, I view education as a vital tool that these students can use to their own benefit. This can be hard to explain to a relatively young group, so I focus on making sure students feel a sense of achievement as they learn, emphasizing it is their own hard work that got them where they are. I am simply a steward or a guide to help them towards their destination. In my class, I not only work on making sure students are taking in new content, but that they are also learning how to carry themselves through the world in order to get to where they want to go. This is especially important in my inclusion class, as students will be entering a world that is not made for them. To do so, we emphasize social skills and social emotional learning, independence, and building self-confidence. These pieces will in turn help them be ready for academic content and achieving their own goals.