Prompt #1

When driving around town trying to find the elementary school my friend and I were assigned to, I felt very out of my element when I was looking around the neighborhood. Many of the buildings we passed by were very old looking, potholes were every five feet, and many of the homes were duplexes or complexes. Hardly any of the houses had front or back yards, or even grass in general. Overall the town seemed almost abandoned; very quiet with the exception of police car alarms and fire truck sirens.
We finally found the school after taking many short and bumpy side streets. Now the only problem was finding the front door. We must have tried every door on the building except the right one. When we approached what we thought was the last possible door we could pull on, we found the bell and rang it. The door had no sign with the school name above it and no markings at all that showed it was the main entrance. We waited outside for what must have been at least ten minutes, but when the door finally opened we walked inside what we thought was the main office door. We soon found out from a very unhappy secretary that it wasn’t, and we were instructed to use a different door. She also commented, “You got to give me a second to get to the door, you know? You only need to ring it once, I’ll get there!” Well excuse me, I thought, this is going to be interesting.
The first couple times I was there, there was a misunderstanding of what I was supposed to be doing, but after a few weeks everything was solved and I was assigned to a second grade class. My teacher was extremely nice, and very welcoming. The classroom is very old and moldy smelling, but it was decorated with lots of color, class art projects, assignments, number lines, calendars, weather charts and maps. There are multiple desks and a reading area with a rug, which is where the teacher mostly taught. The students are hardly ever in their desks, they’re always running all over the place, or, Mrs. Doe we’ll call her, is working with a quarter of the students at a time, and it’s always very loud!
The school definitely has an uncomfortable vibe. I feel like many of the teachers and secretaries I met aren’t very friendly and are always unhappy. The majority of the students that go there are minorities, and in my classroom there is only two Caucasian students. None of the students seem to listen very well and they’re always talking out or misbehaving. Overall the school is kind of stressful because of all the chaos. But one thing I do have to say is they value hard work and good behavior. Any time a student does an outstanding job on something, or has a really good answer to a question, or even is behaving properly they are awarded a paper feather. They can use those paper feathers every two weeks at the school store and buy a prize with them. Unfortunately though, I think this is the only motivation they have to behave in school.