Four Weeks Already?

For my professional bloc placement, I have ventured into the lives of 11^th graders at a suburban High School. There are two blocs of these young saplings, each an hour and twenty minutes apiece and consisting of fifty students. Yes, there are 50 children per class period, which can be quite the handful for one teacher. Here is where there is good news: there are two. My cooperating teacher, Mrs. D, is a co-teacher with Mrs. K. It is a strange set up and it is easy for individuals to become lost, but they know their kids and attempt to handle them in full.

It’s really neat to see this interaction with co-teaching because until this point in time I thought it to be nearly impossible. I work well with people, but picturing how we would have to stay on the same page with lesson planning and assessment makes me want to rip my hair out. However, it’s curious to see how well these two work together and how it is not apparent that any work was split in half. It makes me stop and cock my head at the meaning of teaching even though I’m not sure if it is ever in my future to do the same.

Mrs. D and Mrs. K assess their students creatively. This is a very scary word to some people; half bounce with jitters in their seat while others throw their readied pencils. However, they believe that projects assess better. In this case, I would have to agree. They have a wide variety of assessment. One lesson was a crash course on structured essay writing like the five paragraph essay (which I am a fan of with a pinch of pizzazz). Here they were taught interactively using food to demonstrate importance as well as examples. The students were then asked to rewrite their papers properly following the given structures and highlight them. There was individual work including literary circles where they were to choose a book and read it on their own time. There was partner work utilized through a project of mine with Macbeth as well as collaborating in the literary circles post individual work. They include research, MLA formatting, a lot of in class time to work together, ask us questions, question themselves, and question others. We also read Macbeth aloud which included everyone as a whole and kept them adept visually. All of these points are varied teaching styles, but they are also assessments. Each one brings in a different of assessment; individual, partner, group, and in a variety of different styles: creative, formal, suggestive.

Despite all of the great ideas I am contriving from this experience, no classroom is perfect. More kids are failing than should be, and it’s hard to keep them up to pace when others are doing so well. Fifty kids is a huge class and it’s hard to atone to all of them. Classroom management is also difficult, and yelling and aggression is often used. It’s usually done in a humorous way, however, which lightens the mood, but sometimes so much so that the kids do not take the poke seriously. Overall, the good greatly outweighs the poor. Mrs. D communicates well and it is apparent through the lunchroom. I’ve heard horror stories of what happens there, but I must say I look forward to it here. They are a bit more gossipy than need be, but nothing is out of the question. Everything is light-hearted, but in a good way. It’s entertaining because there are cliques with the teachers, just as there are with the highschoolers, but it’s always a fun time where they can sit back and let their guard down, but never cruel or overbearing.

I cannot believe my last day is so near; four weeks flew by so fast. I have grown attached to the students, melded in with the staff, and been actively involved with the concepts of teaching. I must say every inch of me wants to stay here.