High School Days 1 and 2

 

First things first, I am ecstatic that Amanda and I are going to be working with seniors at our high school placements. I have been wanted a chance to work with seniors since I began my education courses. I wanted to see how teachers prepare their students for the big senior project while managing to find time for reading and writing for their curriculum. I want to see students working on their projects and seeing what they come up with. I may not be the biggest fan of senior projects, but I am always amazed at what students can accomplish.

What I noticed immediately about this school was its size. Not only is the school big but so are the classrooms. This is great because the students have so much room to move about, the classes do not feel as cramped, and the students have a chance to be a little livelier and build a comfortable community. I also love all the art showcased throughout the building. There is an art gallery in the school! That is so cool!

So, as I mentioned, Amanda and I will be working with high school seniors. We will be observing two kinds of English classrooms, a college prep and an inclusion class. We will also get to observe a couple of her senior project prep classes where students complete their binders and work on part of their senior projects. Each class is about an hour long.

One thing these students are told about their senior projects is that they must strive for perfection. Senior project goes to 30% of their final English grade and not completing it means they will not graduate high school. As always, there are those few students who like to question and challenge what is asked of them. One student claimed that college does not use MLA to format their essays. We did get to correct him, seeing as we are still in college ourselves. MLA is everywhere! A math component was also added to the senior project under the basis that “math is everywhere”.

I did notice a great use of cell phones. Everyone has a cell phone. They try to hide it under their desks, behind backpacks, nothing drastically different than when I was in high school. The only difference is that the cell phones got a little bit bigger.

After the senior project prep class, we got to see her English class. She shares a classroom with another teacher, but I was in awe of the set up. There were so many comic book things and geek culture references. It was the kind of set up I would love to have my own classroom look like. It was also pleasant to see that students were allowed to paint on the class walls.

We got to introduce ourselves to our cooperating teacher’s college prep class and they got to tell us how they felt about their classroom. In their words, they said that their classroom was a “comfortable environment”, less of a focus on “just getting the work done”, and they were taught valuable life lessons. They claimed their teacher was motherly, understood them, and had their best interests at heart. I loved the environment created, and I hope I could also create such an environment and relationship with my students.

Afterwards, we spent most of yesterday and today working with the students as they fixed and finished their essays for the senior projects. Amanda and I asked what each student’s topic was, where they thought they would need more help, and worked with them from there. I found myself helping students a lot with citations and MLA format. Many of them used easybib.com and, from personal experience, that website is not always the most reliable. It is better for someone to check for you. Their biggest struggle was formatting dates within their sources.

We may already have a lesson in mind as well for when we teach. We were given the idea to make a lesson on presentations. This would include how to present oneself, how to create a good PowerPoint, how not to read off the slides, practice, etc. I talked to a couple of students myself after class and asked them what they would like and they all agreed that some preparation with making PowerPoints and such would benefit them greatly.

SO for two days a lot has happened. I am so happy to be working with such brilliant students and I look forward to seeing them again.