High School Week 2

When it comes to classroom roles and unspoken rules, the high school I am placed at is incredibly different from the middle school. In mostly all of the high school classrooms I am in, the students immediately sit down and begin to work on the journal question or prompt that is on the board. These are normally funny and interesting, allowing for the students to get their brain motors moving. One of the journal prompts even had students comparing and contrasting “Little House on the Prairie” with “The Walking Dead”. After they would discuss the prompt. This is polar opposite from the middle school classroom I was in where students would come in noisy and take a while to settle down when the teacher instructed to. Then they would go into teacher directed instruction instead of student led discussion on the prompt.

From what I have seen, it seems like academics are valued more than sociability in the high school as opposed to the middle school. There is also a general understanding in the classroom that no matter what is said during classroom discussion, no one’s answers will be judged. There is also an understanding that if you make a point on anything, the teacher will then ask students to elaborate on what they said for deeper understanding. This is very different from the middle school as I saw many students making fun of others if there statements were not very clear. The sharing environment in the middle school was more tense because of this, and students were less open to sharing their ideas.

I am curious to what the cause is for these two worlds to be so different. The middle school was more diverse than the high school and there is a big age difference between seventh graders and 11^th graders, but could the difference also be caused by the differences in the instructor. I wonder if the middle school classroom had a journal to do quickly would students be more willing to share and settle in quicker, or would the students still lack the respect to not laugh at classmates’ misguided answers or statements in response to questions.

I think it would be interesting to see what would happen in the high school classroom if the teacher got rid of journal entries upon entrance. I’m curious if the way students come in and settle quickly would deteriorate without the prompt. I definitely plan on using journal prompts in my classroom so students can settle in right away.