I was asked to do classroom observations for my SED
class. For the purpose of this entry,
all names, including the school’s, have been changed.
As I walked into Riverbank High School, I was overwhelmed at
how enormous the building was. Having graduated from a small private school, it
was astounding to see this huge building that would need to be navigated by
many students on a daily basis. I
wondered how many Freshman were possibly lost for hours trying to go from class
to class.
Once I checked in, I was told to head up to the third floor
to meet the first teacher I would be observing.
Mrs. P. was very nice and welcoming, she explained that her first class
was Senior AP Literature and the next one would be Sophomore World Literature,
but many of those students had IEP’s. I
was pretty excited about this because I thought it would be a good opportunity
to view two very different classes.
When I walked into the class the desks were arranged
traditionally facing the front of the rooms.
Mrs. P. shares a classroom with another teacher so there were two
teacher’s desks at the front of the room.
The walls were filled with posters about vocabulary and different ways
of analyzing literature. One set of
posters that caught my attention was in the front of the room, on the right
side of the classroom. They had the
teacher’s promises to the students on one and the other had the Teacher’s
expectations of the student’s. Normally,
you see the latter; I have not seen one from the teacher to the students. I thought it was a nice gesture to have that
to reassure students that she would offer her best efforts to make class fun
while they learned and to be available to them if they needed help.
As students began to arrive I immediately noticed that the
minority here would be the white students.
Most of the students were Latino, Asian or African American. I could count on one hand the amount of white
students I saw in the few classes I observed.
While the first class I observed was AP students, the next few classes
were integrated with average students and students who had IEP’s.
Once the AP Literature class began the desks quickly
moved. The students were doing the
second half of a mock trial on a book they were reading. The class was divided into two groups for
this project. Group 1 had done their
trial a few days prior so I was able to observe group 2. The concept was good but participation seemed
weak. From the sound of it, group 1 was
better prepared but the teacher made sure to note positive performances in both
groups. The project was meant to really
help the students have a better comprehension of the text and to embrace the
character’s roles in the story. Once they were finished with the mock trial
they reflected on the assignment and what the teacher and the students could
have done better to make it a more effective project. I later found out that this teacher was not
given any books for this class so she kind of had to “wing it” with lesson
plans and teaching this level. I didn’t
ask but wondered if she had purchased the books herself that they were using.
Once reflection was over, she reviewed their homework
assignment. Many students did not pass
anything in. She took the opportunity to
use the student’s who did complete the assignment in a Socratic Seminar, in
order for other students to see how to answer the questions. I felt this teacher did a really good job
with this exercise. She did minimal
talking and asked many open-ended questions to try and get the students to have
a meaningful discussion about the text.
I noticed that there were two students in the group who were more
inclined to speak. The others followed
with the teacher’s prompting. She did
eventually read a particular passage in the text that helped address the
question. Students then began
participating more in the discussion.
Later Mrs. P. told me she thought that the students who weren’t talking
didn’t do as close of a reading of the text as they were supposed to. I felt all of these students were capable of
doing what she was asking. They were
clearly intelligent enough and focused on their work. A couple of them even
went to her after class for further help developing their answers.
I could tell group work was an important part of this
classroom. I truly felt she was
preparing them for a college Literature class.
The style and questions were similar to ones I have had in college. The
teacher was very much in charge of the students but was open to their feedback
and questions.
One thing that did surprise me was the small class
sizes. I expected in a school so big to
see floods of students in the halls and classes. One of the teachers explained that they had
lost a lot of kids this year. Next year
they would be gaining 300 more students when another high school closed. I asked her if she was having a better
experience with smaller classes but she said she wasn’t. This surprised me since I have always heard
small classes make better learning environments. She explained that it limited group work and
the diversity the kids would get in groups.
Also, in bigger classes the students would feed off each other’s ideas;
that concept was harder in a smaller class.
The school seemed like a pleasant place. I was only on the first and third floors so I
cannot properly assess the entire school.
I do feel that the teachers I interacted with truly cared about the
students and enjoyed their job. They
seemed to make their classes as welcoming as they could and held their students
to certain expectations of behavior and work in their classrooms. If I was a student here I think I would feel
comfortable, especially in that the teachers were receptive to feedback and
tried to make a fun, interactive learning experience.
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