Roaming the Halls

I must say the highlight of this experience thus far is being able to visit and take a critical look at the inner workings of the classrooms.  This week was very interesting because we were able to see a variety of classes.  I noticed that some classes had a good percentage of students paying attention, while others seemed to be lacking focus.  It is beneficial as a future teacher to look at these classes and say, "What's working here?" or "What could this teacher do to engage the students more?"  One particular teacher was showing a video in his class that pertained to the lesson they were studying.  He graciously pointed our attention to the board as we entered so we could follow what the plan for the class was. They were at a mid point, and the video seemed to be backing up prior learning that had taken place both in class and in their textbooks.  Now, I remember being in high school and as soon as the TV was pulled out, everyone got ready to take a nap.  We basically considered it free time.  This teacher's method was refreshing because he stopped the video to have a discussion about what they had just seen.  It caused the students to be involved while making an informal assessment to ensure they understood the material.  They would need to pay attention to the film to be able to participate in the discussion.  For the most part, the students had thoughtful responses and appeared to understand the concepts discussed.

A teachable moment came when we all returned to discuss the classes we observed.  I was surprised to find out that this wonderful class we visited was later unfocused and disengaged.  Another group had observed them during a time where they were working on a project and many of the students were fooling around.  They even heard some negative feedback about the teacher.  In my Special Ed class, my professor has mentioned, a few times, that some students benefit from direct instruction.  This is hard to understand when we are taught over and over how indirect instruction is the way to go.  I think this gives us the opportunity to reflect on what we have heard here over the past few weeks.  Every student learns differently, and although we are taught to use indirect instruction, we may have classes that benefit from direct instruction.  The class we observed seemed to be doing well with guided direct instruction, but when they were given the freedom to work on a project to demonstrate their knowledge, it wasn't working out too well.

I remember the first week of this class, one of the first lessons we learned was to be able to change things up seamlessly. As I read through the Chapter 1 of Understanding By Design I thought about how rigid lesson planning can be.  I mean, you start out with the best of intentions and a great plan but what do you do when you get to the final project of the health unit and students are planning their three-day meal plan still using Little Debbie's and Froot Loops?  Sometimes textbooks only provide us with the best scenarios but the reality is that we need to be able to change it up if it's not working and how do we plan for that?  I think the life experience of having this class in an actual high school setting will hopefully prepare us for these unexpected changes.

I wanted to insert this photo as a final thought because I really feel that it reflects a lot of what we have learned and discussed over the past couple of weeks.  For me, not only in this class, but in others I am taking.  It also really highlights what some of the teachers talked about in the panel last week. It really gives focus to the question I'm sure we all are pondering, "What kind of teacher am I going to be?"