This past Thursday was the first day Jess and I were
able to go to our high school placements, and while I was excited before, I am
now even more so. We spent the whole school day with our cooperating teacher
who is fantastic. Even though we were only able to see three classes in action
we also were able to attend a charity club meeting and accompany our teacher
during her hall duty. Our cooperating teacher and the students we met were very
welcoming and some even spoke to us. This is excellent because the first think
I look to do in every classroom I enter is build a relationship with students.
We all know that we do not learn from people we do not like.
This school is so different from any high school I
have ever been in before. Not only because is it so small, but because the
school is almost entirely white. I was really nervous and uncomfortable at
first knowing that I was going into this since I had never experienced such a
thing, but I think I fit in more than I expected to.
To go into the classes we saw, the first was a
creative writing class. In this class we watched a def poet perform and then we
wrote with the students. It seems like the focus of this class is to explore as
many types of writing as possible, and to just write a ton. I’m excited to be
in this class more as it seems like such a safe place to display writing.
The second class we watched was an 11th
grade honors class. In this class we watched a few presentations on human
trafficking and sweatshops. These were all interesting and very well done. The
class seems to be a very well behaved one and all students were respectful
during the presentations.
The last class we saw was another 11th
grade honors class. This class had just finished reading and writing on the
novel Beloved and for this class
period they were continuing to watch the movie. Before the movie was continued,
the teacher went over some mistakes in the students’ papers and then
highlighted some great sentence examples.
The community that is created in my cooperating
teacher’s classrooms seems to be a warm and friendly one. I am super excited to
be returning there this week. I can already tell that Jess and I are going to
have a lot of fun in this school. Designing and implementing a lesson for one
of these classes is going to be truly excellent.
I love your description of what is being taught, Nate. It sounds as if there is a real social justice/critical element going on here. Beloved is no joke!
ReplyDeleteI agree that building relationships is important, and of course we all want students to like us. But how did she do that while also maintaining a respectful atmosphere? Try to analyze what it is she doing and saying that creates that, as it's a good model.