Field Blog #5

Orange High School

On my next visit to Orange High School, I spent one period in my normal classroom and then went off to visit another teacher. In my normal sophomore honors U.S. history class, they were beginning to work on a project. This project was kind of like a research paper, but they just had to make a presentation and share it out it to the class. The broad topic was the 1920s and each student (or pair of students) got to choose a more specific aspect from that period to look up, such as fashion, phrases and sayings, sports, and so on. They had to go onto the internet and find their information off of reliable sources, not just by typing their topic into Google. The teacher gave them some ideas for databases that would be acceptable and ones that the school had online access codes to. They spent the whole time just finding information and making a PowerPoint presentation they would share to the class in the next week. I walked around for part of the class and got to interact with the class, helping them with anything they needed.

The next class I went to was a junior AP government class. The class was mainly lecture from the teacher at the students, but sometimes he would go to them with questions and see if they were able to answer. At one point, he pulled up a website from the U.S. government's website and applied the information to real life. Even though it was an AP class and people generally stereotype them as uptight and full of rules and structure, this class seemed more open and fun. The way the teacher interacted with the students was mainly lecturing them, but he found a way to make it more enjoyable. The enthusiasm he had for the topic made it easier to focus and retain the information.