Field Blog #2

Orange High School

On Monday after I finished my classes for the day, I traveled to Orange High School to do my first individual field visit. I was placed with a social studies teacher who has all sophomores this year, so they are learning all about American history. Being fresh out of high school myself, I was nervous about going into one and seeing how the students would react to me. But in both of the classes I observed in, they were very open to me and started to try to form a friendly relationship, since I will be in their classroom for the next few weeks.

The first class that I observed was an honors course, so there were the more advanced students in it.The teacher had given me a warning that even though these kids were very well behaved and mature, that they were just coming from their lunch period, so they would be a little rowdy. And sure enough, when the bell rang, the students all came in, talking very loudly and just joking around with their friends. But when Mrs. Price was ready for class to start, she told them that and they respected what she asked and got quiet. From the very first few minutes of class, I could tell that there was a strong relationship between the students and the teacher. She asked them how their weekends were, they asked back about hers; it just seemed like they were comfortable to talk as people. Something I thought was cool about this class was that the room was a little chilly, so the teacher brought in blankets and put them at the front of the room on a table. If a student was cold, they could just go take a blanket to wrap themselves in. She made the classroom seem like a very homey and comfortable place where the kids would want to learn in.

The actual class itself was pretty normal, one like the many honor-level classes I took in high school. At the beginning of class, they started off with a quiz based on the reading that they were assigned the night before. Before the quiz started, Mrs. Price opened the class up for any last minute questions and gave them a few minutes to study over their notes. When the students were finished with their quiz, they would hand that in, along with their homework from the day before. In exchange, the teacher gave them the homework for that day so that they would be productive with the time they had in class. When everyone was finished with the quiz, she told them to put their homework away and told them she was going to show an episode of an older TV show that went along with the new topic they were about to learn about. She said she didn't like to show just cut-and-dry documentaries that just throw out facts at you, so she switched it up a little. She handed out a list of questions that went along with the video, and told me it was a good way to keep them focused and get the information across. During the video, the teacher would pause the video and chime in with facts and information that related to topics they already learned about in previous lessons. And when the video was over and class ended, she asked if anyone had questions about what they just learned and helped the students review the information.

The next class I sat in was the same history class, except it was college prep and not honors. The basis of the class was exactly the same though. They took the same quiz and watched the same video as the last class, so it didn't seem that much difference that day. But Mrs. Price told me that that wasn't typical and that this class moves a little bit slower than the other one. They learn about the same things, just in different ways and at a different pace. The relationship she had with the kids though was the same, everyone seemed comfortable around her and that they could be themselves and really take risks in the classroom. She pushed them hard enough so that they would get their work done, but not enough to make her seem like she was a dictator and that the students mean nothing to her.

Overall, I really enjoyed being the classroom on the other side, not being a student. I feel like the teacher is a good one for me to observe and I am already enjoying my visits. I'm looking forward to my next observation and the things I am going to learn from the visits!