Field Blog #6

Orange High School

For my next visit, I did the same thing as the previous visit. I stayed with my regular class for one period and then switched to a new teacher for the second period. For my normal class, they were doing the same thing as the last visit I made. They were spending another period just researching information and putting together their PowerPoint with their partner. Again, for most of the period, I walked around and helped the students with whatever questions they had about their project. One group in specific did the Harlem Renaissance and the people who were a part of that movement. In high school, I did a whole research paper on that, so it was cool to be able to connect my own personal experiences to something they were learning. Being able to help them with something I knew a lot about gave me a good feeling.

The next class I went into was a junior United States government class. This was just the regular level class, so it was a lot different than the AP one I saw in my last visit. First off, there were maybe ten or so kids in the class. It was different to see how small of a class it was, but it seemed like it was more beneficial to the kids; they were better able to interact with their teacher and develop more of a relationship with him. The first few minutes of class, they all just talked; about their days, what they did on the weekend, the homework they had to do, and so on. But soon enough, the teacher pulled up the PowerPoint and started going over it. They would go through the information and every once in a while, he would throw out questions from the book to see if people actually read for homework. If they didn't get it right, they could give the question to another student, but they had to answer the next one, and the process continued in that way. They continued on with the PowerPoint and that took them to the end of class. Throughout a lot of it, they got pretty off topic and that got the teacher upset. He just stopped teaching for a while and said that they would have to teach the rest to themselves and that they would be quizzed over it the next day. I think this small class made it easier for them to all get to know each other, but it made it a lot more difficult to focus and stay on track with their learning.